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A FEW LEAVES 


FROM 


PATHER WOBINSON’S 


SCRAP-BOOK. 





Who thinks most—feels the noblest—acts the best.’’ 


NEW YORK: 
PRINTED FOR FAMILY DISTRIBUTION. 
1866. 





4 
2 
i 


French & Wheat, Printers, 





THIS LITTLE VOLUME 


1s 


AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 


BY 
FATHER AND MOTHER ROBINSON, 


TO THEIR DESCENDANTS, 


AS FOLLOWS: 


JAMES CURTIS ROBINSON, ALMEDA WAIT, MARTHA HAYES, 
MINERVA PATTERSON, SOLON EH, ROBINSON, and NATHAN W. ROBINSON, 


CHILDREN OF 


ANNA LEWIS, 


FORMER WIFE OF FATHER ROBINSON, 
AND THEIR HEIRS ; 


SARAH DEAN, CHLOE PRATT, 
RUTH COY, and JOSEPH C. WALKER, 
CHILDREN OF 


MOTHER ROBINSON, 


BY HER FORMER HUSBAND, JOSEPH WALKER, OF BYRON, 


AND THEIR HEIRS ; 


AND 


MARY F. DAVIS, D, ELIZA PETTENGILL, 
ZILPHA R. PLUMB, HARRIET C. RANDALL, 
TRACY ROBINSON, JANE HARWOOD, 


AND CHARLES J. ROBINSON, 


OUR OWN CHILDREN, 


AND THEIR HEIRS. 





]Our Photographs, by Gro. P. HOPKINS, of Albion, N. Y., will be found hereto attached.] 





ON TEN TS. 





+> + 

» 5 PAGE 
Autobiographical Introduction......5.... cc. ese scneeswieeeees 9 
eMBMOUTY «2. ....-..-..-+- Up es ae ea te eee 17 
PIER A MEOP URW... 2 ce ee eee et eee ees 20 
NS i ess Os sabe cv aie coe da sews’ ee 22 
2 re 23 
SE i ee 26 
IMO fe eon cle eee eee tee ng viete'e's 27 
@ieense syevers and Liquor Traffic. .......... 22... -..eee woes 28 
PRONG 5 ca |: feces oe viectypp ae es vnc sseces 30 
The Rum-Selling Conspirators.............. _ he a ae 32 
Merete OT PUNT, 5... ee cee eee eee ee ees 32 
(TSS) OES 0s gi Oe 
mE MIRE ETQINOCTACY so os cn ese ee tec ee ces 36 
NTE ee dt lec gc etter teens 38 
Pree amiital Party... 6... ee ele eee ee eee Cee 
rice ss sda we nhercceeese 40 
te MCaiePed PICKOb ee oe Ls a eae 40 
MeePeeE UeDANAN., 2... 1 yee teen eee 41 
AMER ECRSOIO) ee ee ye ee ee we 6 eg eae a 42 
Re Rie GOR so eo ose 5... ees 28 Ere Amen See 43 
eee Ord Polks at-Home”... . 2... 2... see cn eee 44 
Meeeeaerrom the Church... . 2... 1. cece ce cece eees 48 
ETC CS yn 0 13 eg 49 
Claims of the Bible and Church Considered................... 53 
Pee ener Fencing. 22... ce eee eee ee eee: 55 
I re) Sw ia we shee sv cbe ees 59 
aD Sto, AA ae 2 ee ee 60 
ee et IOUAT PTIZ0.7 ee sete teens 62 
PIPE IVODGOT 8. ela en be aes eee esse en ene 64 
The U. S. Constitution an Anti-Slavery Instrument... ....... 6 
Meteo Win. TH. Seward... 05 o..6 oi eee eee ees 69 
EE Se) So. cei a ps S Seb Kk ve eck pees ae 75 
The Conflict between Freedom and Slavery.................. 77 
EIEIO OU oe a. eee ens cows accu ss Be 8 
The Conflict between Freedom and Slavery, Souk ceoheabe Saher sane &0 
emeroama Prnit Gardens ..... 03.26.2006. secce ween pe. 
OO SIN 90 85 
Deemer TOtieee TORLOM TIS sn a el wg eee eens ae 87 
Father Robinson on the President’s Letter.................. 87 


vi CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
Major General Fremont... ......+...0+-+1.+0 «a¢)=)ee ne 89 
A Plea for Emancipation ... ......3..6 2. aw yes een 92 
Letter to the President. 2.2... .. 5000040 oa eee 94 
The Doom of Slavery .......... ©.) se ae oe oat een 96 
Why not use Blacks as Soldiers?................ PPP HT SE 98 
The President’s Policy we gies de ene hizo enee 98 
Political Temperance Action... ...... <1. .a. «seine 100 
Intemperance and Slavery................ “iia <n en eee 101 
‘¢A Good Moral Character.”.... ......>..25 ee ase 103 
Letter to Governor Seymour... ... . .... 1. sees eee 104 
Governor Seymour and the Democracy.................40: .. 106 
The.Sham Democracy :>........ -. 55. 0....3 See 111 
A Democratic Victory. 2... 2. sw. 2. ¢., 5 ee 112 
Rebellion the Offspring of Slavery and the ‘‘ Democracy.”..... 113 
The Slave Democracy making its own History..,............. 114 
Argument vs.. Séurrility 2... S220. ene ee 116 
Tjetter to "Thurlow Weed... 2.2 2. 3. fe tae eee 116 
Gen. Thomas on Arming Negroes. ... 0... 2ssse gee 118 
The Church and “Reform....7. 2. aus ee ten PN 119 
The Whisky Rebellion Again. .; .). J... 2) oe. eee eee 121 
Letter to Governor Hunt:. >. 0.2... 2c oa oon 123 
Universality of Intemperance: .. .... . 22. Seeue 124 
Governor Seymour's Message... 2.. o5, ...) aa ee 125 
The Excise’ Law. i). 02... 2s) ieee ge er 128 
The True Remedy... 02... 2.24 .is uk 129 
The Democratic Revenue... .. 5.2. ......5)5se 131 
The Baltimore Nomination. ~... 7... 291. ee 131 
A-Gentle Criticism. 00.00.59. 5... y. bake oe 135 
Letter to Gerrit. Smith. 0.20200 62.0 ces nee 136 
The Record of thigmDemocracy. ..)...:.. aoe ee 138 
Our National Deliverance. ...77.. 2. oan ahh eee 140 
The Elective Franchise for Women... 7.1.4...) eee 144 
The Slave Power and Rum Power...s. ..1.:s+4.) snes ae 145 
Letter to Hon. Horace Greeley. :.... 3.5 are 147 
Who Should Exercise the Right of Suffrage?.................. 148 
Now's the Time for Action. 73... ... 7... 153 
The Ballot-Box the only Remedy.................-ssee+ee:e- 154 


Only Waiting... 00... ss cc0s oe nee evs oe 155 


eorwe ta WAC). i, 


To one who is watching the career of a Republic such as our own, 
it would be of interest to know what hidden forces lie beneath the 
visible operations of Society and Government. It would be of 
vast advantage to the politician, and especially to the political Re- 
former, to obtain a clear estimate of the quality and tone of thought 
among the laboring classes, those who send their ‘‘ Representa- 
tives” to the law-making Centers of the States and the Nation. 
The present work is a product from the hard hand of toil—a series 
of reflections flung out from the quick brain of an honest, sturdy, 
elastic, energetic, self-made Son of the Soil, one who, because he 
had the skill, however crude, to shape his thoughts into expression, 
became by so much a representative of the mental status and moral 
influence of a large class of intelligent but unlettered yeomanry 
throughout our country. 

But quite aside from any public interest which might attach to 
the contents of this little volume, we, to whom it is bequeathed, 
feel a private and individual interest such as those cannot who claim 
no filial relationship with its author. We have often seen the 
thoughtful brow and the swiftly moving pen when others were wrapt 
-in slumber ; we have heard the strong, terse, telling sentences, from 
childhood up, sent home to the minds and consciences of friends 
and neighbors, concerning giant social and political wrongs ; and, 
more than all, we have marked the silent heroism and cheerful 
courage with which our Father has met the severe trials and heavy 


burdens of his toilsome life day after day and year after year, con- 


Vili PREFACE. 


quering mighty difficulties and wielding a power for good on all 
who came within the circle of his influence. 

Thus nobly has our Mother also borne the weary weight of her 
earthly life. How difficult has been her path, how heavy her cares, 
how varied and fearful her responsibilities ; yet how greatly good 
and sweetly wise and tenderly loving has her true heart been during 
all these years. And now that the burden and heat of the day have 
passed, the beauty of holiness clothes her spirit as with a garment 
of light. Ina private letter dated December 15th, 1865, our Father 
writes: ‘‘Your dear Mother was seventy-one yesterday, and how 
well and smart she is, and O, how good she is in waiting upon, 
nursing, and comforting me. I never appreciated her more than 
now.” 

Looking toward the Sunset, our Father and Mother thus calmly 
await that ‘‘kind and welcome servant who unlocks with noiseless 
hand life’s flower-encircled door to show us those we love.” That 
the Life Beyond may shower upon them its heavenly benedictions, 
and fill all their declining days with the blessedness of peace, is the 
prayer of 
THEIR CHILDREN. 








AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 








Iwas told by my parents, Nathan Robinson and 
Martha Demick, that my grandfather, James Robin- 
son, was from England, and that he furnished sup- 
plies for a portion of the Revolutionary army. I was. 
born in Durham, Connecticut, January 5th, 1792. 
My present wife, daughter of Theodore M. Fenn 
and Mary Dibble, was also born in the same State, in 
the town of Salisbury, December 14th, 1794. My 
parents removed to Sauquoit, Oneida county, New 
York, in 1794. 

When a boy I was quite fond of fishing, hunting, 
climbing trees, and of chopping them down—chopped 
down an acre when twelve years old—my father’s 
farm furnishing opportunities for these sports. A 
small stream ran through the woodland, whick 
extended the entire length of the farm, called Stony 
Brook—so full of speckled trout that one day in a 
few hours I caught with a hook.a peck of the wrig- 
glers. The woods, too, furnished small game to shoot 
and trap, such as foxes, woodchucks, squirrels, par- 


10 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 


tridges, pigeons, owls, and other birds, with trees 
saith to climb and to fell. 

On casting about to choose a business for life, I 
concluded to become a machinist, and, in commenc- 
ing, built a miniature forge on Sten Brook ; then 
anilyned that idea, and chose farming. 


I began steady labor on the farm, summers, when 
about twelve years old—attended district school, 
winters, till eighteen, when—during December and 
' January—attended a select school on the west side of 
Sauquoit creek, living on the east side. It was 
taught by William Bacon, son of an old resident. 
There I learned all the grammar I got from books, 
studying for a week only, a small work by Alexander 
—studied and practiced surveying five weeks at the 
same school—got something of the art, so that, after 
removing here, practiced considerably in running 
roads and dividing lots. 

This terminated my school advantages. In Febru- 
ary, at the close of our school term with Bacon, 
joined three schoolmates and started on foot for the 
St. Lawrence country—went to Grand River, some 
distance above Montreal, to find employment in lum- 
bering and rafting ; failing, returned to Hamilton, a 
new town-site, situated twenty miles below Ogdens- 
burg, at the head of the first rapids on the St. 
Lawrence. Three of us engaged in rafting plank and 
staves, and when the raft was ready, went on it to Que- 
bec—myself as cook—returned home in October with | 
$105 in coin—my earnings besides expenses—-my 
father giving me an outfit of $12. 





AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 11 


I married, two years after returning, Anna Lewis, 
daughter of Ebenezer Lewis, a during-the-war’s-man 
in the Revolutionary army, in the cavalry service. Wil- 
ham Lewis, first Sheriff of Orleans county, was her 
brother. Sickness prevented us, wife and two children, 
_ from leaving for the ‘‘ Genesees” in the spring of 1813, 
as contemplated ; but on regaining health, about 
mid-summer, started with oxen, cart, dog, gun, a few 
household goods, money enough to bring us on, and 
$25 left to book a lot with ; were on the road ten 
days, arriving safely at Farewell’s Mills, now Claren- 
don Center, July 25, 1813. Pretty woody was it. 
then, abounding with bears, wolves, and deer, and 
interspersed with a few log-cabins. Rochester con- 
tained a number of these, one of which was built and 
inhabited by Hamlet Scranton, whose wife was my 
mother’s sister. The town of Murray, by which title 
the country was then designated, was a few years 
afterward subdivided into eight towns, and the county 
of Genesee into five counties, namely: Genesee, 
Orleans, Monroe, Livingston, and Wyoming. Our 
local habitation was in Clarendon, Orleans county, 
amidst undulating landscapes, and within hearing of 
“‘ the kind voice of streams.” 


Bereft of my companion in February, 1823, and 
left with six children, I married, the following Sep- 
_ tember, Damaris Fenn, widow of Joseph Walker, of 
_ Byron, with four children, making a family of ten, 
and the oldest but ten years of age. The seven liv- 
_ ing children by this marriage have distributed them- 
_ selves over a wide area, so that the “Old Folks at 


12 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 


Home” have been living alone for several years, till 
within a few weeks, finding ourselves no longer able to 
do so, we invited a daughter and son-in-law to come 
and abide with us. So we are ‘ Only Waiting.” 
After laboring straight on from twelve to seventy- 
four, I was laid by a good, on the 18th of Beeuetg 
1865, by hemorrhage of the kidneys. 


Mother Robinson and myself are each the eldest of 
ten children. Our united family has reached just 
double that number—a full score. Three of our 
children went to the “Summer-Land” im infancy ; 
one the first-born of Anna Lewis, two the offspring 
of my present union. Fifteen of the seventeen who. : 
arrived at adult years are living at this writing, son 
Curtis and daughter Martha, of my former marriage, 
having departed some years since, leaving families. 


The first article in the present volume was written 
for the Republican Advocate, at the outbreak of the 
Morgan excitement, which was most intense and 
widespread ; but I believe no very serious lawless 
violence was committed, though an attempt to de- 
stroy Miller’s printing- -offigh of Batavia, where the 
first article was printed, a a S Revelations of 
the secrets of the order were published, was made by | 
a band of Free Masons ; but the preparations for the | 
defense of the office were so timely and formidable 
that the attack was abandoned. The cause of this 
wild excitement was a belief in the minds of many 
that William Morgan, the author of the Revelations, 
was kidnapped at Batavia, and spirited around by 
Canandaigua, and from thence taken and sunk ‘by — 








Spt O° egg eee 


< 


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 13 


weights in the Niagara River. This was in Septem- 
ber, 1826. By reading a few of my articles published 
immediately subsequent, you may judge how much I 
valued Secret Societies. Nor has my mind changed. 

Among the men thrown upon the surface and 
brought to notice by this excitement, was one Thur- 
low Weed, who grew to be a most skillful and match- 
less political leader and intriguer. Further notice of 
him may be found in this work. 


-Thenceforward I continued to write for different 
papers on various topics—politics, religion, agricul- 
ture, temperance, &c., embracing the latter cause 
heartily, as I did every work I put hand to. I became 
a teetotaller in earnest, and my ‘ better half” with 
me, and still remain so. Having never formed a taste 
for strong drink, used but little tea or coffee, and no 
tobacco, (oh, the nasty stuff!) I had to sacrifice but 
little to become a total abstainer from the whole 
tribe of depletives. 

In due time we had a farm of one hundred acres 
cleared up and paid for, with tolerable buildings and 
fixtures, and a good orchard and garden. The pres- 
sure of cares of farm and family forbade my reading 
or writing much in the day-time, so, from 1827, the: 
date of the first article, to 1851, when we removed to 
Holley, I had written about one hundred articles by 
candle-light, after a hard day’s work, for I never did 
any light or easy ones. On seeing a number of pa- 
pers containing my productions lying around loose, 
our son Tracy, then a boy, suggested that they be 
placed in scrap-book form, and thus preserved, and I 


14 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 


followed the suggestion, filling a large-sized account- 
book, of which only a few articles and extracts will be 
found in this work. Since coming to Holley I have 
had more leisure, having only the garden to take care 
of—the products and manner of culture thereof being 
described in this work. Hence I have taken daylight 
more in which to read and write. I have three scrap- 
books filled, containing some two hundred and ninety 
printed numbers—matter enough, I should judge, for 
a volume of seven or eight hundred pages, of which a 
small portion will be found here. For instance, I 
find eight numbers under the caption of Farm AND 
FTRESIDE, three under that of THREE WEEKS IN AND 
AROUND New York, and six entitled THe CHurcH 
AND BisLE CONSIDERED, and only one of each will 
be inserted. Also four series of five numbers each, on 
different. topics, are omitted altogether. My first 
printed article will commence the book, and the last 
one, written since I did my last day’s work, and pub- 
lished in the State League, will close it. Hach 
extract, in order to be distinguished from entire pro- 
ductions, will invariably be closed with a period and 
dash, thus.— 3 

Meantime, other little services which I was called 
upon to render took time and labor, such as serving 
the town of Clarendon in a number of petty offices, 
acting as Supervisor from 1827, for three years, &c. 
Sundays for many years we devoted to going five 
miles to a close-communion Baptist church to which 
we belonged. After a time I was suspended for 
being shaky on close-communion ; joined the Free- 








AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 15 


will Baptist Church, and my letter of withdrawal 
therefrom will be found in, this book. I now belong 
to no church organization, but run my own alone ! 
We had one son, five grandsons, and a grand- 
son-in-Jaw in the Union army during the great Rebel- 
lion. The last, Cyrus Kerts, made the grand tour 
with Sherman’s gallant army. Most of these served 
during the war, and all came out alive, though one 
of them, Walker Ingersoll, son of our daughter, 
Sarah Ingersoll Dean, was badly wounded in the 
breast—rebel bullet still in him—in defense of the 
gunboat Underwriter ; was taken prisoner and lodged 
in a succession of southern prison-hells—Salisbury, 
Goldsborough, Libby, and for five months in that 
dreadful slaughter-pen, Andersonville. We had also 
fifteen nephews in the Union ranks, besides numer- 
ous remoter relatives. Four of the fifteen perished in 
the strife. Richard Robinson, son of my brother 
Charles, died in hospital ; Henry A. Spencer, son-in- 
law of my sister Harriet, died a prisoner in Salisbury ; 
Levi Preston, adopted son of my sister Content, died 
of disease contracted in camp ; and Newell Warren, 
son of Elder A. Warren and my sister Martha, died 
by one of the fearful casualties of war. Belonging to 
the Heavy Artillery, and accidentally falling from 
his seat while the corps was in rapid motion, he was 
crushed to death by the passing train. Henry Wil- 
cox, a son of sister Harriet, who entered the service 
at an early day, is missing, but may still survive in 
some locality to us unknown. My wife’s sister, Sarah 
Fenn Brintnall, had two sons in the army, one of 


16 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 


whom was shot through the jaw by a rebel bullet, 
tearing away the teeth. Andrew J. Williams, a 
nephew, by marriage, of our daughter Mary, served 
faithfully through the war, being twice severely 
wounded, and losing two brothers in the service. 

I was for four months a private in the war of 1812, 
and obtained an honorable discharge after the sortie 
battle of Fort Erie, September 14th, 1814, in which I 
participated, and which closed the war on this frontier. 

Mine has been a wonderful age for inventions and 
discoveries—the steam-power age. Within fifty years, 
Railroads, Telegraphs, Photographs, Steamships, 
Steam Mills, Iron-clads, Iron Plows, Power Looms, 
Cotton Gins, Threshing Machines, Planters, Mow- 
ers, Reapers, Revolving Rakes, and Oil Wells have 
sprung into existence, and the crowning work of all 
is the abolishment of American Slavery ! 


CHAUNCEY RoBInson. 


Hotty, N. Y., Oct. 15, 1865. 





ON 


PATHER ROBINSON’S 


mePAP-BOO K. 





ANTI-MASONRY. 


May 30, 1827. 


[The following address and resolution of the Corresponding Committee of the 
town of Clarendon, Orleans Co., N. Y., published in the Batavia Republican 
Advocate, were prepared by the chairman, Chauncey Robinson.] 


FELLOW CITIZENS: In vain have we looked to the halls 


of the Legislature for provisions to avert the impending 


storm which now hangs heavily over our heads, but our com- 
plaints are treated by a majority of that body “like the 
capricious squalls of a child who knows not whether it is 
aggrieved or no.’ We are told daily by those acting under 
Masonic influence, that our reason has departed us; that 
the people are led on by wild fanatics. that visionary pro- 
jects occupy our brain. Again we are told it is an office- 
seeking business ;—curious novelty, that three-fourths of the 
toil-worn sons of the West should all of a sudden leave their 
plows, and follow some chimerical fanatic to hunt for office. 
Again, we are told it is all a bugbear about Morgan’s being 
kidnapped and murdered ; he has only gone off and secreted 
himself in order that he and his associates may speculate 
out of his book. 'The same language is re-echoed from the 
floor of the Assembly. This flimsy story, which no rational 
man who has informed himself on this subject can for a mo- 
ment believe, and which is worn threadbare, is now new- 
vamped by the legislative debate, but the story is a mere 


~ 


18 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


impositicn, in order, if possible, to render this dark transac- 
tion more dark. 

But we will admit that all is a speculation, and on what 
better ground does the subject rest, or what less need is 
there of legislative interference, or in what better shape does 
the fraternity present itself to public view? Say it is a 
money speculation, and who is engaged in it? Masons 
extensively. And what is the moving cause? Masonry ! 
If Masonry, then, is of so damnable a nature as to cause and 
induce its members to speculate upon the peace of commu- 
nity, as to shake the very foundations of civil government, 
and tear society to its center, then, then is it time speedily 
for all good men, Masons or anti-Masons, to make a univer- 
sal effort, and chase the huge monster from within our 
borders. 

Fellow citizens, are you prepared for the Masonic : 
yoke? If not, wake, then, your sleeping energies—rise in 
the majesty of a sovereign people proud of their rights, and 
vindicate the laws of the land, regardless of the divine 
right of kings, and manifest to the world that we are not a 
giddy multitude, prepared to be hewers of wood and drawers 
of water, but are capable of self-government. 

Where is Morgan? has been echoed and re-echoed by 
thousands and tens of thousands, and let us again press the 
inquiry with redoubled energies—what has become of him ? 
Is he murdered, as is generally believed? If not, where is 
he ? These reasonable interrogations Masons are abundantly 
able to answer. ‘To arrest, then, the just indignation of an 
insulted community, you will without the least self-evasion 
or mental reservation, give the information desired. We 
demand at your hands a full development of this dark mys- 
tery. Unravel the dubious transaction, and if it is a foul 
speculation, prove it so to the world. If the man is mur- 
dered, give the public the particulars of his fate, hand over 
the culprits to the constituted authorities of the land, and 
save yourselves and your tottering fabric from eternal in- 
famy. If there be any of the order who are not participa- 
tors in the diabolical transaction, (which we charitably 
hope there are many,) come out from among them and be 
ye separate, that the rewards of the guilty may be no longer 
visited upon the jnnocent. Our neighbors are invited to co- 








ANTI-MASONRY. 19 


operate with us in these reasonable demands upon the fra- 
ternity, that we may speak with a voice that shall be heard. 

Trifle no longer with our feelings and our fears; the sen- 
timents which animate our bosoms are of no mean kind ; 
they are such as gave a nation birth and an exalted station 
among the empires of the earth ;—bright index to point en- 
thralled millions to freedom and to happiness. 

“ No government can nor will long endure, which does not 
protect the rights of its subjects.” These are expres- 
sions of the immortal Washington; and by his last legacy 
to the people of this nation we are warned to beware of all 
secret societies. ‘To this advice let us cheerfully acquiesce, 
and the rising generation are incited to look steadfastly to 
these parental admonitions, that when the present genera- 
tion shall be urged from the stage of action by the propel- 
ling power of nature, and the space now occupied by your 
fathers shall be possessed by yourselves, you may repose in 
security beneath the lofty pillars of your happy constitu- 
tion, fearless of molestation from secret internal foes. 
Therefore, 

Resolved, That much is due to the investigating com- 
mittee for their prompt and energetic endeavors to unravel 
the dark and mysterious fate of the unfortunate Morgan, and 
we enjoin it upon them to push the investigation with vigor, 
and if pecuniary aid is required, one of the committee whose 
business it is, will communicate information to the chairman 
of the committee of this town, that subscriptions may be 
opened for that purpose. It is further suggested that a 
general convention of the corresponding committees of the 
several towns be held at a time and place to be designated 
by the general committee. 


20 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


A PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 


1830. - 


[From the Orleans Telegraph.] 


A coroner’s inquest was held in the town of Clarendon, 
on the 27th ult., over the body of Elijah Dolly, who ap- 
peared, on examination, to have died in a fit of intoxication 
in the bar-room of Chester Lusk.—C. Rosinson, Coroner. 

Three days previous, the wife of a Mr. Annis was buried 
in an adjoining neighborhood, who came to her end in the 
most horrible manner, under the influence of that overflow- 
ing scourge—intemperance—which is deluging this fair land. 
The particulars of this awful event, as near as I have been 
able to learn, are these: The wife, being intoxicated, fell 
into the fire, from which she was unable to extricate herself 
The husband undertook to drag her out, but being himself 
drunken, fell in likewise. With some difficulty, the man got 
out of the fire, and then poured water into the embers in 
order to check the flames which were surrounding his intox- 
icated wife, which only served to heap upon her the hot 
embers on the hearth, and the poor victim was literally 
roasted, and in a few days expired. 

It is with extreme anguish of mind that I have witnessed 
for many years the appalling evil of intemperance, which, 
like a mighty tempest, has been sweeping through our land, 
spreading terror and devastation in its hithefto resistless 
train. 

The efforts which are making, and the considerable suc- 
cess attendant thereupon, seem, however, to open a ray of 
hope that at some day the fell destroyer will be banished 
from our happy land. Notwithstanding the apparent suc- 
cess which attends the great efforts that are making, yet I 
am constrained to conclude that the ends attained fall far 
short of the mighty means made use of. ; 

If the majority of the people of this commonwealth would 
view the evil in its true light, the disease might be cured at 
once; the monster might be slain at a blow. 

Should a mad dog infest your streets, you would chain or 
destroy the infuriated animal. Should any person be found 
vending ratsbane for a beverage, you would think him guilty 








A PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 21 


of manslaughter, at least, and you would not think it arbi- 
trary to provide laws for the suppression of the evil, if none 
already existed. That the use of ardent spirits, in any 
quantity whatever, (that is, for a drink,) is a moral and phy- 
sical evil, is an undeniable fact. Strike off all the evil which 
its use engenders, and it produces not the least possible 
good. ‘Temperate drinkers are much better without any. 
Under these considerations, I would ask the candid reader, 
why not strike, and destroy the murderer at a blow? Why 
not strike at the root of the evil? When noxious weeds 
grow in your gardens, the easiest and most effectual way to 
get rid of them is to dig them up by the roots. The sur- 
geon, to cure a wound, first heals the bottom. It would be 
the hight of folly to cry fire! fire! and suffer the incendiary 
to run loose and thrust his torch into all the dwellings of 
the city. Thus, while great and mighty efforts are making 
to stop the evil of intemperance, there are at least half a 
dozen in every town licensed by authority to spread the 
contagion. 

I have now arrived at a point, and the reader will readily 
anticipate the conclusion. But, say you, it would be an ar- 
bitrary stretch of legislative power to pass a law that no 
person, except for medical purposes, shall be licensed to 
vend the kind of poison called Alcohol ? 

If it be not arbitrary to pass laws td suppress profane 
swearing, sabbath-breaking, raffling, and other minor evils, 
then surely laws for the suppression of the greatest evil that 
exists among us, or rather the root of all evil, is not. 

Let the Congress or Legislature, then, make laws with 
sufficient penalties to prohibit all persons vending ardent 
spirits, instead of licensing them to do so, and the great 
work is at once accomplished. 


: 


22, FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


ANTI-MASONRY. 


Dec. 19, 1832. 


{From the Orleans American. ]} 


A fearful crisis has arrived in our political history. A few 
more rolling suns and all may be lost! A short period, 
and our most cherished institutions, and the lights which 
have been thereby kindled among the nations of the earth, 


and all that by freemen is held most dear, may be forever 


blotted out! And are these fears well founded? If so, is 
there a patriot, is there a true lover of his country, who can 
speak a single word, that will not stand up in defense of her 
expiring institutions 4 

Let us for a moinent glance at what I conceive to be 
some of the most prominent causes of these alarms. It is 
now six years since a daring and high-handed violation of 
our laws was committed by members of a secret and power- 
ful combination; so much so, that, notwithstanding the 
unceasing efforts of a highly incensed community, aided by 
the strong arm of the law, combined with the Legislative 
and Executive departments, all proving too weak and pow- 
erless to reach the dark retreats of that combination, they 


have violated the laws, and they have triumphed over them! ~ 


The wicked combination is still powerful and undissolved. 
Nor is this all of the picture. Although our citi- 
zens have been duly and authentically informed of the 
alarming facts referred to, that such a combination did exist 
among us, which had the will to violate the laws, and the 
power to prostrate their healthful and legitimate operations, 
still, after all the light that has been thrown upon the sub- 
ject; after all the disrepute the laws, the Legislature and 
the Executive have fallen into, by the exhibition of their 
weakness when put in contact with the laws and practices 
of Freemasonry; after it was ascertained that most of the 
offices of Government were held by members of the society, 
they are still left in quiet possession of them. They yet 
have the skill and the power to hold the reins of Govern- 
ment, and are left to administer, or rather mal-administer, 
the laws over which they have so often triumphed. ‘They 
have conspired against the Government, yet the people 
suffer them still to administer it. 








TARIFF AND NATIONAL BANE. 23 


Again: in administering the Government, its firmest pil- 
lars are beginning to totter. Not only in this great State 
are the Judiciary and the laws set at defiance, but the Su- 
preme Court, the highest judicial tribunal in the nation, is 
shorn of its honor, and State after State is suffered to break 
loose from its solemn obligations, and run lawless upon the 
Federal Government. American citizens are shut up with 
felons in: prisons and penitentiaries, for no crime known to 
the laws. Dissolution, bloodshed and carnage, desolation 
and horror, fire-brands and death, stare us in the face ! 

Is there, then, no cause of alarm? Shall those who pro- 
fess to be friends of their country forsake her in the hour of 
her peril? God forbid! Shall the professed asserters of 
the “supremacy of the laws ” fold their arms in indifference, 
while pillar after pillar is prostrated, and they themselves 
sink beneath their crumbling ruins ? 

C. Rosrnson. 


a 


TARIFF AND NATIONAL BANK. 


1836. 
[From the Orleans American. ] 
To the Hon. AuFRED Baxscocs, (then Member of Congress.) 


Dear Sir: The world has witnessed excitements in all 
ages; but, perhaps, never more than in this country and in 
our time. Excitements many times produce astonishing re- 
sults; but excitement in any cause, however good, will have 
its reaction, and fall back on principle and men of principle 
for its support. It has been so with the temperance cause, 
and we need not be surprised if it should be so again; it has 
been so in the political history of our country, and most em- 
phatically may it not be said that the spirit and genius of 
our Government, and the prosperity, happiness, and even 
the political existence of the country, has fallen back on 
principle and men of principle. And now, sir, the great 
question is to be settled, whether or not there is weight of 
character, of numbers, and of moral influence sufficient to 
sustain our peculiar institutions ? or whether the very hands 


24 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


that have built up shall prove the architects of their own 
destruction ? | 

I fear, unless there is a great change in public sentiment, 
relative to some of the leading measures of the country, that 
the latter question will receive a most decisive affirmative. 

In 1833, the country had reached a very high summit of 
prosperity, altogether unknown in its history hitherto. In 
1816, the country was in a state of perfect prostration in all 
its departments, and, in every sense of the word, we were 
then much in the condition that we are now. Under the 
administration of Madison, or rather in the last half of that 
administration—1816—the people, the Congress, and the 
President, came to the conclusion that a Tariff and a Bank 
would enable the country to repair the ruéns and liquidate 
the debts of two wars, and likewise obviate the disastrous 
consequences arising from the refusal or neglect of this same 
administration, at a former period, to re-establish a Bank of 
‘the United States. Undoubted experience has shown most 
triumphantly that that conclusion was quite rational. 

The philosopher would say that like causes produce like 
effects. And now, when we find ourselves in the self-same 
predicament, as to the adverse circumstances of the country 
and Government, why, after “unsettling the fixed order of 
things,” and having exhausted every expedient that human 
ingenuity could devise, suffering intensely from year to year, 
and waxing worse and worse daily—why, I say, do not a 
people who clamor stoutly of their own capacity for self- 
government go back and take up old and tried measures ? 
Is it anything but the madness of party delirium that 
hinders? Is it not by the mist of high-sounding party 
names that many are led away captive, and become blind to 
their dearest interests and the welfare and prosperity of the 
country ? 

But the idea of a Bank, I suppose, is out of the question. 
The old hero of New Orleans told the good people of America 
that the Bank was an awful, great monster, devouring his 
millions at a meal! No one could tell why it was so, but 
General Jackson said it was so, and that was enough; and 
after it had had an apparently harmless existence of forty 
years or more—proving of immense value to the country— 
the old Roman said it must go down, and down it went, and 








TARIFF AND NATIONAL BANK. 25: 


the people all cried a long AMEN. Van and John, the 
footsteppers, Say so, too, and what the people won’t do to 
perpetuate their own degradation and ruin, the veto must; 
and the Democracy, with up-caps, cry louder still—huzza, 
the DEspoT against the people—the minority against the 
majority | 

In i816, the national debt was about one hundred and 
twenty-seven millions, including the Louisiana purchase. 
The payment of this large sum, with interest, must be pro- 
vided for. Provisions for defraying the ordinary expenses 
of Government, amounting to the snug sum of $231,889,- 
529 17—or more than thirteen and a half millions a year, 
from 1817 to 1833, inclusive—must also be made, amount- 
ing, in principal and interest, to more than four hundred 
million dollars. 

And sir, how was this to be done? How were these mil- 
lions to be heaped together? How were they? Answer: 
By the avails of duties on imports, the proceeds of the pub- 
lic lands, aided by a Bank of the United States to transact 
the business. And these millions were piled up and rolled 
together so easy, that not a citizen of the whole Union 
knew how it was done; that is, no one felt the least incon- 
venience or burden on account of it. 

Now if this is a tax on the consumer—as some pretend by 
the tarifi—or the Bank such a gormandizer, I pray you, 
sir, with all Congress assembled, together with President 
Tyler, to tax and devour us just so again; but if the acting 
President, having the veto power at his command, and a will 
to use or abuse it—to control the action of Congress, and 
thwart the will and wants of the people themselves—I say, 
if «his Majesty ” will not grant us a Bank, let us take per- 
haps the only thing that he will give us, and try his exche- 
quer—or his Bank, under that title, founded on public or 
private deposits—and submit, for the time being, to the dic- 
tates of the one-man power, however humiliating and incon- 
sistent it may seem to the admirers of a free representative 
Government, knowing that this monarchial feature belongs 
to our code, and be patient, as good citizens, until the odious 
feature may be constitutionally “ expunged.” 

Under this course of policy not only the Government got 
along swimmingly, but the States and the people mounted 





96 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


rapidly beyond all precedent in the scale of prosperity and 
greatness; and such were the outpourings of the rivers of 
wealth under this system, that, on the final extinguishment 
of ihe national debt, it was found necessary to open new 
channels to carry off the surplus, and hence the distribution 
of the surplus revenue among the States. — 

And now, sir, how has it always been with us in the ab- 
sence of this policy? How isitnow! To these inquiries I 
need make no reply. The Government itself is on the verge of 
bankruptcy ; every department of industry or business, and 
every citizen, sees and feels the withering blight that is 
brooding over the country, in the absence and in the want 
of this great and cardinal, and, till the unfortunate reign of 
Andrew Jackson, the seztled policy of the Government. 

I will close by quoting a sentence from Washington’s 
farewell address—though short, yet of momentous import : 
‘‘No Government can long endure, that does not protect the 
rights and interests of its subjects.” 

Sir, will this Government longer delay to pass laws for 
the better protection of the rights and interests of this peo- 
ple? or, if passed, shall we be left in constant suspense, 
arising from distrust in their stability? If so, then is our 
fate inevitable; and the last lamp of liberty must soon go 
out—the last hope of the world expire. 

Accept, sir, assurances of my sincere regard. : 


A CONSTITUENT. 


LAW AND LAW BOOKS. 


March 19, 1846. 


To THE EpDITor oF THE Memoria: I learn from | 
your last number, (for I am a learner in these matters,) that 
a man to become a ripe lawyer, must swallow mentally and 
digest about a thousand law books /—most of them pretty 
formidable ones, too. Now, sir, I propose that all this huge 
mass of knight-errantry be gathered into a capacious store- 
house, where there are plenty of razs, and that a number of 
citizens be selected, (not to exceed seventy,) of good common 
sense, understanding the simple principles of right and wrong 





TO TEMPERANCE MEN. oT 


—to meet, say, at the city of Albany—to compilea single book, 
to contain a criminal and civil code; said book not to exceed 
in dimensions that containing our moral code, and prefaced 
by the last few passages of the 12th chapter of Paul’s 
Epistle to the Romans, written out in golden capitals—thus : 

1. “RECOMPENSE TO NO MAN EVIL FOR 
EVIL. PROVIDE THINGS HONEST IN THE 
SIGHT OF ALL MEN. 

2. “IF IT BE POSSIBLE, AS MUCH AS LIETH 
IN YOU, LIVE PEACEABLY WITH ALL MEN. 

38. “IF THINE ENEMY HUNGER, FEED HIM; 
IF HE THIRST, GIVE HIM DRINK: FOR IN SO 
DOING THOU SHALT HEAP COALS OF FIRE 
ON HIS HEAD. 

4. “BE NOT OVERCOME OF EVIL, BUT OVER- 
COME EVIL WITH GOOD.” 

Yours, | LAYMAN. 





TO TEMPERANCE MEN. 


Sept. 15, 184%. 


[From the Contributor.] 


Bro. Grosvenor: I have frequently asked myself, in the 
last few months, whether the trial of ’46 was to be the last 
grand effort to suppress the sale of intoxicating drinks in 
the State of New York, by law? ‘The answer has involun- 
tarily come up in my own soul, God forbid, No! I cannot 
think that the terrible voice of 65,000 majority against this 
mischievous trade shall be heard of nomore. ‘The proceedings 
of the recent State Temperance Convention, and the sensible 
article of H. N. Howland, published in the Contributor of 
the 8th Sept. inst., has somewhat cleared up my misgivings. 

Gambling, extortion and other evils have been checked 
by adequate laws. ‘The tables of the money-changers were 
upset the first day, by the effectual usury law. So might 
the tables of the rumsellers be overturned, and this giant 
evil suppressed just as edsily. It is due the vast majority 
of “no sale men” that such a law be forthcoming. ‘lhe 
law of 1846 was a flat concern. It was no better than a 
pop-gun to kill a éeger. 


~ 


28 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


As a kind of feeler, I would suggest, through your excel- 
lent paper, a plan of a law which, I think, if enacted, would 
be a match to the evil. Let its provisions be such that any 
quantity of intoxicating drink, small or great, that shall be 


sold by one person to another to be drunk, or as a drink or 
beverage, become a perpetual debt against the vender—if 


paid for by the purchaser at the time of purchase—liable to 
be sued for by himself, or the wife of said purchaser, or any 
other person, and recover double the amount with double 
costs. ‘This lability to extend at least twenty-five years, 
if the purchase be made on credit, and not collectable at all. 
Likewise, let suitable penalties lie against the vender. Per- 
haps the standing penal enactments are sufficient. Provide 
suitable protection for those who engage in its sale for 
proper objects, medicinal, the arts, &c.; repeal all laws and 
parts of laws conflicting with these provisions, and let all 
sell who choose to under this regulation, and, in my humble 
opinion, the business of rum-selling would soon cease, and 
be numbered with the lottery and usury business, and, pro- 
bably, with betting on elections, as a thing that was. 


C. Rosinson. 


LICENSE SYSTEM AND LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 


August, 1851. 


[From the Temperance Journal. ] 


Could I wield the pen of a ready writer, I would attempt 
to describe somewhat minutely this vast system and busi- 


ness, and its horrid consequences upon the inhabitants of the ~ 


United States. But I am not vain enough to suppose I 
have knowledge, ingenuity, or imagination, either to elabo- 
rate even a tithe of the murderous system, or to paint its 


terrible results. But, Mr. Editor, with your indulgence we 


will take a glance at the “beast.” 

First, then, to begin at his head and horns. The General 
Government has so systematized the business, as to protect 
and encourage the introduction from abroad, the streams of 
liquid death at all points of our extended country accessible 
by water, besides encouraging its manufacture and sale in 


ee To. 7 








LICENSE SYSTEM AND LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 29 


vast quantities inland. And for what purpose? What good 
does it do? What hasitever done? Who cantell? None! 
During the twenty-five or thirty years that the temperance 
cause has been in progress, no responsible man in this coun- 
try, or in any other country, has dared to attempt to prove 
that intoxicating drinks are ever beneficial to men in health. 
True, some have tried to defend the license system, under 
pretense that it would restrict and limit the evils arising 
from its otherwise freer sale and use, and thus, in this hypo- 
critical, second-hand form, defend the drinking customs of 
the day. 

No person claiming common sense has ever dared to meet 
the naked question, and attempt a manly affirmation, nor can 
any one successfully. There is not a redeeming trait about 
it. It is evil, and nothing else. Who dare deny it? Why, 
then, we repeat, is it thus introduced and its introduction 
and its manufacture and use encouraged and protected by 
laws, both of Congress and the State governments? Why, 
revenue to defray the expenses of governments—aye, yes, to 
pamper to a vitiated taste? Here it is, reader, in these two 
words, money and appetite. If by the introduction of the 
Asiatic cholera, money could be made and revenue derived 
from it, would Government give license? Oh no! it would 
not taste right—would not be exhilarating—it kills too quick. 
I have sometimes thought that the liquor gamesters would 
have to continue to increase the drugging process of the filthy 
poison, so that a dram would kill a person as quick as the 
cholera, ere they would take warning. 

If the introduction of that terrific malady, cholera, could 
be successfully legislated against, how quickly would it be 
done! Buta greater than cholera is here. If cholera slays 
its thousands, strong drink does its millions. Why, then, 
be so partial to the one, compared to which the other is but a 
drop in the bucket? None but a superhuman being can 
foot up the sum of the wails and the woes caused by this. 
accursed system; the light and retributions of eternity can 
only unfold them. 

Second. In answer to these inquiries, Mr. Gough would 
have it that “ten out of twelve have part of the bacon.” 
This, in my view, is the only rational answer why licenses 
are granted, and the manufacture continued. About in this 


30 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


proportion are we receiving the price in some form, else 
why do not the Governments and the people set themselves 
religiously and vigorously at work to rid themselves of so 
great a plague? Why? the Government wants money, 
and some of its members like to crack a bottle of champagne, 
or take a suck of good old rum and sugar. Oh, yes; and 
perhaps the more sober ones have an interest in another 
direction. To agitate this question now, might disturb the 
harmony of ow party, and possibly distract it; besides, the 
rumsellers can wield a pretty strong influence at a pending, 
and, perhaps, to me, important election. So we had better 
“keep dark,” and thus take part of the prize; and as go the 
leaders, so go the masses. 

Farmers can furnish the raw material to the distiller and 
brewer, for their share, and perhaps a few of them are still 
keeping up the old custom of carrying a jug of the “ critter” 
into the field, to help them on with haying and harvesting. 

But some Christians think the cause of temperance too 
hackneyed and worn out, and should the minister happen to 
broach the subject, especially on the Lord’s day, why ‘“he’d 
better preach relzgion.” Besides, we fear that party poli- 
tics, too, prevent church members, in many cases, from acting 
efficiently ; and sometimes I am led to think that rum and 
rum money have an influence on some others, while multi- 
tudes fold their arms and say, “ Let’s see how the Wash- 
ingtonians, Sons, Daughters, Cadets, Templars, and Recha- 
bites will fix it;’? while rumsellers and liquor and beer 
peddlers want the profits of the sale. Excise Boards, too, in 
city and town, want the fee for granting licenses; besides, 
some of their number have a friend to serve, or indeed, per- 
haps, a peculiar thirst to quench. Noris thisall; the whole 
system works admirably. ‘The fruits of the licensed traffic 
are displayed in brawls, rows and riots, so members of the 
board—some of them, at least, who are police officers and 
pettifoggers—have a deep interest in the matter. 

Poor-houses, poor-masters, turnkeys, clerks, lawyers, 
courts and jurors, officers of the State prisons, lunatic asy- 
lums and hangmen have more business to transact, and 
receive more fees from this source alone, than from all others 
combined. And the treasurers have more money to pay out, 
and tax-payers to pay in, to support this beautiful system, 
than for everything else of a public nature. 





THE TRAFFIC AT HOME. 31 


Thus it seems that almost all have part of the bacon, in 
selling, drinking, revenue, fees, or in some form, except the 
wretched wife and children of the drunkard, and the tax- 
payer. Perhaps, for the loss of his share, he may console 
himself with the reflection that he has been able to furnish 
some of the raw material to the manufacturer, in exchange 
for the liquor, and has not turned traitor by going over to 
the other party to vote for some candidate whom he believes 
is a better man. 

Reader, how long will you suffer under this state of things, 
and not make a more vigorous, manly effort to rid yourself 
and country from it? ‘Though the State and national Gov- 
ernment are both against you, and multitudes of the people 
are willing to have it so, thousands decidedly against a 
change which renders the warfare arduous and vet difficult, 


the conquest, when achieved, will be the more brilliant. 
Ck. 


THE TRAFFIC AT HOME. 


August 15, 1851. 
[From the Temperance Journal.] 


DEAR FATHER CHIPMAN: In my last I wandered some- 
what over the United States, but I am inclined now to talk 
a little about home matters. 

Well, in this little town of Murray, not ‘seven by nine,” 
but six miles square only, we have nzneteen licenses—so I 
am told by one of the Board—all doing a fair business, I 
Suppose; and, as though this was not enough to accommo- 
date the good people with drink this hot weather, there are 
some volunteers among them, dry goods merchants, and 
other kind souls. Old Murray against the world! The 
banner town, this! JI hear it remarked, though, that we 
are not quite as well off as they are in Buffalo, after all; it 
is said that the shoemakers keep and sell the good creature 
there. The shoemakers here, I believe, do not trade in strong 
drinks : so I have heard it said since I came here, by a gen- 
tleman who would not lie about such small matters. 

Still, there are some good temperance men left in Holley, 
but pretty stupid are they. We are trying to spur them up, 
and they may show signs of life after a season. C. R. 


32 - FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


THE RUM-SELLING CONSPIRATORS. 


October 20, 1851. 


Mr. Epiror: Conspiracies have been formed against 
the interests of men in all ages, and none less so, perhaps, 
than in our own times. The “ gun-powder plot” against 
the Parliament of Great Britain, Arnold’s and Run’s Con- 
spiracy, &c., and recently the Michigan Conspiracy, all 
planned to gratify avarice or revenge. But all these, and — 
all the treasonable plots ever instigated by man, are but 
dust in the balance compared te the grand Rumsellers’ Con- 
spiracy. ‘The former are confined to small localities, involv- 
ing life and property, but to a limited extent, whereas this 
stupendous liquor-dealers’ conspiracy involves, not only 
property and life, but character and influence, temporal and 
eternal destinies of a large proportion of the human race ; 
and any means, however reprehensible or villainous, are re- 
sorted to, to corrupt and destroy mankind for gain. No 
law is binding upon them more than upon pirates at sea, or 
freebooters on the ljand—perfectly unscrupulous as to means, 
only that they get the money.— 





THE DESOLATIONS OF RUM. 


Of the scourges which have heretofore desolated, and are 
now afflicting our common country, no one can be named 
which bears rivalship with the use of intoxicating liquors. 

The history of the world coincides with the observations 
of every ingenuous and philosophic mind in fully attesting 
the fact, that their use, as a beverage, by persons in health, 
is ever pernicious, never beneficial; and that, with few excep- 
tions, the individual habitually using them soon becomes 
a drunkard. ‘The use of such liquors, as a beverage, is, 
therefore, intemperance; and he who speaks of their moder- 
ate or temperate use, abuses reason, despises truth, and 
perverts language. 

Without a single redeeming trait, their sole and entire 
aim is to ruin and destroy the human species. ‘They begin 
their work by changing man into a brute, continue it by 





THE DESOLATIONS OF RUM. 33 


transforming him into a monster, and abandon him only 
when he has ceased to breathe. However viewed, and 
wherever found, intemperance, in its beginning, its progress, 
and its end, is everywhere marked by desolation and woe. 
Alcohol, both in name and in truth, is the poison of our 
species. Chemical analysis and physiological experiment 
have established beyond controversy, that alcohol received 
into the stomach remains unchanged, unassimilated; and, 
as such, travels with the blood through the various arteries, 
veins and organs of the system, not as blood, nor its fit com- 
panion, but as a murderous associate, a treacherous high- 
wayman, charged with poison, and commissioned to destroy. 

In its journey round, it feeds upon the liver, corrodes the 
lungs, burns the stomach, ruins the appetite, impairs diges- 
tion, discolors and vitiates the blood, defiles the breath, crim- 
sons the nose, parches the lips, blisters the tongue, scalds 
the throat, husks the voice, bloats the face, dims the eye, 
wastes the muscles, palsies the limbs, deranges the nerves, 
and consumes the heart; and, as though its warrant was not 
yet fully executed, a detached portion of it aims at the 
head, breaks through its delicate vessels, crowds out reason, 
and fears not to profane divinity’s earthly temple. What 
wonder, then, that the spirit drinker is a maniac. 

But even now its baneful work is hardly begun. Having 
thus undermined the health and prepared the system for 
the ravages of disease, it strikes at the moral and intellec- 
tual powers of man. It enfeebles the understanding, impairs 
the judgment, effaces the memory, extinguishes sensibility, 
pollutes the imagination, depraves taste, stupefies conscience, 
annihilates honor, prostrates self-respect, debases the social 
affections, sours the disposition, inflames the wicked passions, 
dethrones reason, and contaminates the heart; and thus 
quenches rational life and blots out the moral image of 
Deity’s handiwork. Why, therefore, must the intemperate 
man become a human fiend? Who is safe where be is ? 

And yet the traffic is tolerated. ‘The use of intoxicating 
drinks is continued. Its march of ruin is onward. Still, it 
reaches abroad to others, invades the family circle, and 
spreads woe and sorrow all around it. It cuts down youth 
in its vigor, manhood in its strength, and age in its weak- 
ness. It breaks a father’s heart, bereaves a doting mother, 


34 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


extinguishes the natural affections, crazes conjugal love, blots 
out filial attachment, blights parental hope, and brings 
down mourning age in sorrow to the grave. It produces 
weakness, not strength; sickness, not health; death, not 
life. It makes wives widows; children, orphans; fathers, 
fiends, and it constitutes all of them paupers and beggars. 


It hails fevers, feeds rheumatism, nurses gout, welcomes © 


epidemic, invites the cholera, imports pestilence, and em- 
braces consumption. It fills the land with idleness, poverty, 
disease and crime. It supplies your jails, your alms-houses 
and your asylums. It engenders controversy, fosters quar- 
rels, and cherishes riots. It contemns law, spurns order, 
and promotes tumults and mobs. It crowds your peniten- 
tiaries, and furnishes the victims for the gallows. It is the 


life-blood cf the gambler, the aliment of the counterfeiter, 


the prop of the highwayman, and the support of the midnight 
incendiary. 

It countenances the liar, respects the thief, and esteems 
the blasphemer. It violates obligations, reverences fraud, 
and honors infamy. It defames benevolence, hates love, 


accuses virtue, and slandersinnocence. It incites the father - 


to butcher his offspring, helps the husband to massacre his 
wife, and aids the child to grind his parricidal axe. It burns 
up man, consumes woman, detests life, curses God, and 
despises heaven. 

It suborns witnesses, nurses perjury, defiles the jury-box, 
and stains the judicial ermine. It bribes votes, disqualifies 
voters, corrupts elections, pollutes our institutions, and en- 
dangers our Government. It degrades the citizen, debases 
the legislator, dishonors the statesman, and disarms the 
patriot. It brings shame, not honor; terror, not safety ; 
despair, not hope; misery, not happiness ; and now, as with 
the malevolence of a fiend, it calmly surveys its frightful 
desolation. Still insatiate, it poisons felicity, kills peace, 
ruins morals, blights confidence, contaminates reputation, 
and wipes out manly honor; then it curses the world, and 
laughs at the ruin it has wrought. 

Humanity now asks, and patriotism and philanthrophy 
earnestly inquire, shall it, must it continue longer in our free 
but abused country ? Ifso, why? What good has it done ? 
What good can it effect ? Whom can it benefit? And 
how ? 


e Yr 


Ne — mers 
- rs 


$e" 
a 





PROFITS OF A SMALL FARM. 35 


Against this hydra of intemperance the best efforts of the 
virtuous, the benevolent and the patriotic have for years 
been arrayed. Let all who know its pernicious effects 
steadily direct their influence and their efforts to remove it - 
from the land. C. R. 


PROFITS OF A SMALL FARM. 


Kebruary 19, 1856. 


{From the Albany Courier and Journal.] 


Mr. Eniror—S?r: Perhaps if the following statement 
was placed on your agricultural page, it might inter est some 
of your readers. I am induced to make it by reading of an 
extraordinary product from a few rods of ground, contained 
in your paper of Feb. 2d, by Robert Arthurs, Pitt town- 
ship, Pa., thrown out as a kind of challenge by the Western 
Agriculturalist, Pittsburgh. 

My statement is made, not so much to beat that of Mr. 
Arthurs, which, perhaps, I could not do, but more to give 
my testimony to what may be raised on a given area of 
earth’s surface, and to show how very little is now pro- 
duced, to what might be, for the sustenance of its inhabit- 
ants. 

I have in my “house lot,” or garden, ninety rods under 


cultivation. I quit farming and field labor to come on to 
_it at the age of sixty, four years since, and have been able, 


in that time, to pretty thoroughly kill out the weeds which 
were growing luxuriantly, for the ground is naturally good 
—none better in this region—and its increase in the pro- 
duct of vegetables has been gaining yearly till this year, or 
last summer, and probably has now attained its maximum. 
I shall make no reckoning of fruit, because peaches and 
plums were a perfect failure here last season, though there 
are on the place fifteen bearing peach trees, which have 


_ before produced abundantly, nine plum trees, which have 
_ done the same. Besides, there are grape-vines, apple, 
_ pear, cherry and quince trees, and not less than four bush- 
_ els of currants grown this year, which, at the price set by 
_ Mr. A., would amount to $7 68; of pears and quinces, 
/.some, probably enough, with a few quarts of goose and 
_ raspberries, to make $10 in fruit. 


36 FATHER ROBINSON'S SCRAP-BOOK. 


Here is the product in vegetables: 


150 bushels -onions, 3)... ..c.c0 7. eee 625 cts. $93 75 
25° do | early potatoes’, eee eee $1 00 25 00 
12 bbls: cucumber pickles 2.7 >. sae 3 25 39 00 
30 bushels English turnips............... 25 7 50 
10 ‘do French....> 28.2.2 ee 37 3 70 

200 lids. cabbage, 0.5.2 aes > ae Jt 8 00 
20 bushels carrots... 9 (ic wena eee 25 5 00 

Produce of hot beds ...... ee 5 00 

3 bushels tomatoes. ...,.0..%s.. 08 eee 1 00 3 00 

1. do beans»... os" 2745.5. eee 2 00 

2) do ‘sweet comme: (. a... ee 1 00 2 00 

2° “do “peas... erences 5, Ook ce ee 1 00 2 00 

2. do. squash 2.3 .Gbce poet ee 1 00 2 00 

200 hds. lettuce ~....:2c.isn ba ae oe 1 2 00 

5 bushels beets, .=...5,. 0: «eee 50 2 50 

1 bed parsneps, 15x4 feet extended, set. . 1 50 

1 do vegetable oysters................. 1 00 

2 lbs. dried sage: a... 0...) ae ee 50 1 00 
ldo beet, carrot, parsnep and lettuce 

seed of each...) 25) sa eee 2 00 

Amounting t0,, 2... .05. ca as cog tie eo oan ne ae $207 95 

Which, if you add $10 for fruit, would make a total of...... $217 95 


Or $2 42 per square rod, or $387 20 per acre. 
C. Rosinson. 


FEDERALISM vs. DEMOCRACY. 
June 16, 1856. 


[From the Orleans American. ] 


S. A. ANpDREws—Dear Sir: In your issue of June 
12th, you remark concerning the meeting at the Court- 
house on the 7th inst., that the “old federalists, now sham 
democrats, were not at all represented;’’ and why should 
they be? These plantation exhibitions are strictly demo- 
cratic, and these sham democrats approve them; hence they 
would be out of place at such a meeting. 

I hope, sir, no editor, or other person, will ever again 
slander the old federalists, and the federal party, by a compar- 
ison with the present democracy and the democratic party. 
They never ought to be mentioned the same day. Federal- 
ism proposed honestly to abridge the liberty of speech and 
of the Press, and limit the right of suffrage under forms of 





= ————— ———K— es rrS—™S—S.—“< 





FEDERALISM VS. DEMOCRACY. on 


law, so that a man could know to what extent he could ex- 
ercise those rights. 

How is it with democracy since it linked its fortunes with 
slaveocracy ? Does it aim not only to abridge, but to sub- 
vert and overthrow these pillars of American liberty legally 
and peaceably? Far from it. These two elements are dis- | 
tilled down to Mobocracy. Every ruffian is left to deal out 
just such measure as his brutal passions seem to demand. 
No person is safe in person, property, or life, from brute 
force, which may fall upon him at any time or place, for 
speaking, writing, printing or voting against the new fan- 
gled democracy. He is exposed to be bound. scourged, tor- 
tured, tarred and feathered, his building burned, whole 
towns sacked, plundered, demolished, because the inhabitants 
love Liberty more than Slavery—invited to Kansas by a 
law of a democratic Congress, then hung, shot and burned 
for going thither. 'The Free Press is hated with intensified 
hatred, broken up and thrown into some river beyond re- 
covery, and the proprietors hunted like wild beasts. 

An honorable Senator is knocked down senseless and bleed- 


ing in his seat in the Senate Chamber for exposing some of 


the enormities of this pretender, when the American Senate 
itself stands bound, helpless, and speechless, before the 
bloody death’s head of modern democracy. 

This compound democracy, under the lead of some of its 


chiefs, Pierce, Douglas & Co., has pushed us to the verge 
_ of civil war; likewise foreign war, in its graspings after new 
_ territory, on which to extend and perpetuate the democra- 

tic institution of human bondage. Its face and hands are 


all stained, and its garments drip with the fresh, warm 


_ blood of American freemen, guilty of no offense but refus- 


ing to fall down and worship the image they had set up in 


_ the name of democracy. 


Nor are Slaveocracy and Mobocracy all the ocracies used 


_ to make up the full proportions of counterfeit democracy.— 
_ Add Popeocracy and rumocracy, and youhave it. The lat- 
_ ter is eminently calculated to give it prodigious vitality. _ 
It is pledged to the spread of intemperance, pauperism and 
crime, as well as to the extension of human slavery. Po- 
litical popery could not be felt or feared in this country 
_ were not the Catholics marshaled to swell the ranks of the 


38 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


bogus democrat party, as they are at every election, local 
or general. So with slavery. The slave power would be 
quite insignificant, as it ought to be in our system of gov- 
ernment, but for the aid and comfort bestowed upon it by 
pro-slavery dough-faced democrats. C. 


FREEDOM vs, SLAVERY. 


August 4, 1856. 


Freedom is a living, breathing principle; it will never die. 
Flood cannot drown it nor flame burn it. Like the lilies of 
the field it toils not, neither does it spin. It springs sponta- 
neous and eternal in the human soul, and bids the slave 
himself to struggle up, and no less so for the infusion of 
white blood. It 


‘* Taves through all life 
fixtends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, 
Opcrates unspent. ”’ 


Not so with slavery; it is a perishable article. It has 
died out in all the more northern States of this confederacy. 
It will begin to rot down in the southern portion so soon as 
it is girdled. It has died out in all the British possessions 
and in most of the monarchies and despotisms of the old 
world. Besides, it is too costly a concern to compete suc- 
cessfully with a principle that lives without effort and is 
immortal. 

It has to erect, and keep in repair, and in operation too, 
many gun factories, knife factories, ship factories, and dog 
factories. ‘lhe whole society where it exists is too barbar- 
ous, brutal and bloody for this age. And now that the bat- 
tle is fairly-set between the extension and power of freedom 
and free laborers and labor, and slavery and slave labor “ on 
this continent,” I am heartily glad: It leaves a broad and 
free field for a free fight. C. R. 


ee 


~ 


ee! Le es a 


id , i » . a 
ee a ee a a 





THE NON-COMMITTAL PARTY. =. 32 


THE NON-COMMITTAL PARTY. 
July 20, 1856. 
[From the Orleans American.] 


We will now give the ‘“‘sham democrats” a short respite, 
and turn our attention for afew moments to the straddle-of- 
the-fence, non-committal party. 

The slave democrats have avowed boldly, by word and 
deed, their determination to extend and perpetuate Ameri- 
can slavery, to still enable the slave power to hold the pre- 
ponderance in the national government. ‘The Republican 
party, on the contrary, are equally determined that freedom 
shall be the rule, slavery the exception—that slavery shall 
net be further extended on this continent, and that the gov- 
ernment shall be administered in favor of liberty. And 
what is this middle party about? 'They denounce, to be 
sure, in their platform, the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, which re-opened the slavery agitation, but what are 
they going to do about it? Why, drive freedom out and 
establish slavery in Kansas. The vote in the House is 
proof positive on this point, on the question to admit her as 
a Free State—all, with one exception, of that party, voting 
with the Buchanan democrats against her. 

This party is a fungus—a worse sham than the democrat- 
ic has come to be, and what amazes me most is, that one 
single, honest, intelligent citizen should stay in it, or be 
longer hoodwinked by it. They seem to have waked up 
just now from a two or three hundred years’ snooze, during 
which time the country has been wholly peopled with for- 
eigners. How did these astonished, self-conceited Natives 
come by this inheritance, that they should now attempt, at 
this late day, to elbow out all other people, or, if they come, 
make them man-servants and maid-servants for twenty-one 
years, do your drudgery in-doors and out, pay taxes, con- 
tribute to the prosperity of the country, but not participate 
in its privileges? White slaves North, black slaves South, 
that’s the difference. 


40 FATHER ROBINSON'S SCRAP-BOOK. 


PROPHETIC. 


Sept.. 1856. 


{From the Orleans American. ] 


—We say again to all Union-savers or subverters, slave- 
holders, their aiders, abettors, apologists for slavery and its 
extension, that you are to be all turned out of office, in the 
United States Government—in the State Governments, in 
all the Free States immediately, and in the Slave States 
not very remotely, for these three reasons: 1. That we 
have a constitutional and lawful right to do it. 2. That 
you have held them long enough; and the third and great 
reason is, that you have proved FALSE to constitutional 
liberty ! And leave it to you to cut the rope—split up the 
Union—you will probably make slow work of it, after 
losing the Executive, Legislative, Judicial and Military 
power. It will be an up-hill business—mark that! Ihave 
known hogs, sometimes, try to tear down the pen after be- 
ing turned out of it, because there was no living with them 
in it. SPECTATOR. 


THE MONGREL TICKET. 
Oct. 27, 1856. 


[From the Orleans American. ] 


Well, Gov. Hunt is nestling again for Uncle Sam’s nipple. 
A more appropriate nomination than this could not be made. 
He combines all the elements the fusionists could wish. 
Intensely silver-gray, the pro-slavery Democrats and pro- 
slavery Whigs, twin relics, can well fuse on Mr. Hunt. 
Besides being a prodigious Union-saver, with Mr. Fillmore, 
he would sacrifice independence, the Constitution and liberty 
itself for the Union—let the slaveocracy have their own 
way for it. I know whereof I speak in saying this. 

Mr. Hunt and my humble self corresponded freely when 
he was in Congress, dwelling especially on the slavery 
question, and I know him through and through; and mul- 
titudes of others know him too. He is a fine lump for 
southern plotters to mold. Union and policy is his theme. 








THE ELECTION OF BUCHANAN. 41 


In one of my letters I inquired of him, (as being a Whig 
and one of his supporters,) that, if no impertinence, why 
northern members—more of them—did not muster indepen- 
dence enough to meet them, open the door and let the devils 
out, try them and end at once and forever this everlasting 
din about dissolution; for the slaveholders would as soon 
plunge into Shadrach’s fiery furnace as go out of the Union. 
But Washington put on a long face and wrote in reply, in 
substance—our southern brethren are quite sensitive and 
impatient; we must treat them gently; should we make 
such a proposal they might part company, nevertheless, 
with us, and we should thus lose their gracious presence, and 
split up the Union. 


THE ELECTION OF BUCHANAN. 


December 1, 1856. 
[From the Orleans American. ] 


Mr. Epiror: It is amusing to see the croaking of the - 
Southern press since the election of Buchanan; how the 
slaveholders determined the result of the election by their 
sturdy threats of disunion, and thus give them a four years’ 
lease more of the government, so in that time they can 
prepare to leave the Union in spite of our fears and lament- 
ations. 

I wish the Northern Free Press would meet these gas- 
conaders promptly, and let them know the real state of 
public sentiment here, if they can be taught anything. 
They might know now, from the result of the election, 
that their threats of disunion frightened but few people 
comparatively. ‘There are some doughfaces left here in the 
Free States yet, like Fillmore, Hunt & Co., but their 
numbers are growing beautifully less. We have a remedy 
for those thus afflicted, called ballot-box ointment, which 
proves a sovereign recipe. It is cheap, and we shall keep 
applying it till the fire-eaters of the Slave States back 
down, slavery be extinguished, the constitutional liberties 
of the people, “justice, protection of life, liberty and prop- 
erty, freedom of speech, of debate, of the press, and the right 
to keep and bear arms,”’ till the “ citizens of each State shall 


42 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the 
several States ’’ be established, both North and South. 

It is not the senseless threat of disunion to which the 
shamocracy owes its present triumph—its barren scepter, 
as it will prove to be. No! It was ignorance .and whisky 
that gave you the triumph. Foreign bog-trotters, led up 
_ to the polls in droves by the rum argument more than by 
any other, either the commands of pope or priest, and the 
democracy thus carried the day ; connected to which was a 
similar element—a class of voters along the borders of 
‘slavery, of its own offspring, debauched by it, ignorant, 
stupid and reckless with the other—these holding the bal- 
ance of votes in the south part of the southern tier of Free 
States, and in the cities everywhere, with the cotton mer- 
chants, gave the election to Buchanan. Who ought not to 
shout over such a victory ? Border ruffians, indeed, should 
hurra over it.— 


THE LAST MESSAGE. 


[From the Orleans American. ] 


President Pierce is a very poor apologist and advocate 
for slavery. In his zeal to promote its interests, he has 
overdone the thing altogether, thereby given the anti- 
slavery cause a new and powerful impulse, encouraged 
slaveholders only to weaken their own cause, both North 
and South, in our own and other nations, rendering chat- 
telized men and women a more precarious species of prop- 
erty, and hastening rapidly the time for the final overthrow 
of the system, peaceably or forcibly ! 

Who doubts but the bondman in this free country must 
sooner or later shed his chains ? and who that can discern 
the signs of the times can fail to see the period approach- 
ing? No man in the country has hastened that period 
more swiftly than President Pierce. His every movement 
tends directly to that end. His last Message, denouncing 
the Republicans for their anti-slavery tendencies, is well 
adapted to keep up the agitation, which he pledged him- 
self in the Inaugural to keep down. 

‘Slowly the hand has crawled along the dial-plate, 
wrong is heaped upon wrong, and oppression cries,”’ and at 





THE DECISION. 43 


length the people are aroused. Slaveholders, the aristoc- 
racy, consisting of one-half of one per cent. of the inhabit- 
ants, supported by their allies, the shamocratic party, rule, 
and cry dissolution if they cannot. 

They administer the government, aiming to strengthen, 
extend, and perpetuate slavery, while freedom grows strong, 
“gathers fresh strength from fresh opposition.’ Slave 
States hitherto have been added in violation of the Consti- 
tution, which guarantees a republican, not a despotic gov- 
ernment—Louisiana received with slavery — Texas and 
Florida at the South. The Fugitive Slave Law comes not 
for the benefit of the people, but the nobility—Kansas at the 
North seized—swindled away trom free labor—laws forced 
upon the citizens thereof without their consent, and they 
forced to obey them—Whitfield accepted by Congress as 
delegate under those laws, after being rejected by that body 
because these same laws were void and without force. Who 
believes the agitation is going to cool off? 

The Republicans are charged by the Message with com- 
bining to usurp the Government of the United States, - 
because they undertake to overturn such an administration 
—the slaveocracy that has ruled so long. 

“Governments derive their just powers from the consent 
of the governed.” They have usurped the sacred rights of 
freemen in Kansas—-forced them to obey laws which they 
detest—had no voice in enacting—a “government deri- 
ving” authority from fraud and force, without the ‘ con- 
sent of the governed’”’—the legislature of their choice broken 
up by Federal armed bands. The Government of the 
United States is guilty of usurpation, not we— 





THE DECISION. 


March 18, L857. 
[From the Orleans American. ] 

In the Tribune of Saturday, March 14, over the signature 
of “T.S. P.,” occurs this bold and blunt remark: “This 
Union is not worth saving, nor this Government worth pre- 
serving, upon the basis of the doctrine of the inaugural, 
backed by the late decision of the Supreme Court.” Never 


44 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


were truer words spoken. If, in all our high hopes and con- 
scious security as being under a Government ordained to 
establish justice and to secure the blessings of liberty, it 
tnrns out now, after two generations, to be a mere sham, a 
stupendous fraud, then away with it. If the Constitution 
of the United States is, indeed, what the Garrisonians pro- 
nounce it to be, and what the slaveocratic administration 
with its judiciary say it is—a gigantic instrument of oppres- 
sion, founded to extend, strengthen and perpetuate human 
bondage, instead of the blessings of liberty, then trample it 
in the dust, and begin anew. The sooner the better!— C.R. 





“FROM THE OLD-FOLKS AT HOME.” 


Nov. 20, 1857. 


[From the Waukegan Excelsior. ] 


I have purposely refrained from speaking, either in public 
or private, of the family troubles of 8. G. Love, till now, 
thinking that the merciless storm of malignity beating upon 
the devoted head of Mary, his former wife and our daughter, 
in consequence of the divorce and the unhappy causes of 
it, might have, ere this, spent its force; but I have waited 
in vain; I see no end to it, and hence it is time for me to 
speak out in defense of the fair character of our much 
esteemed daughter, with what force and power I may com- 
mand. Iam glad, therefore, Messrs. Editors, that a space 
in your columns is opened to me, and I am invited to fill it. 

And let me state in the outset, that those gentlemen of 
the press who are pursuing herself and husband, A. J. Davis, 
with fiendish malignity, should not complain if they are 
handled not very smoothly, especially a gentleman editor 
of your own place, conductor of the Waukegan Weekly 
Gazette. ‘“'The rod for the fool’s back.” 

And here I have to say, that my composition may be 
rather rough—without finish—as I was educated in a dis- 
trict school, and graduated, at the age of twelve, between 
the plow-handles, yet I hope to make myself understood. 

On the 6th of June last, that paper contained a scurrilous 
article against Mr. Davis and lady, which was made up of 
sly insinuations against the private character of Mr. Davis, 








FROM THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME. 45 


-and bold falsehoods against his wife, to which Mr. C. M. 
Plumb wrote a reply, correcting the falsehoods, on the 23d 
of the same month. One of the false charges brought 
against them was, that an agreement of marriage was entered 
into between Mr. and Mrs. Davis before the divorce took 
place, and was the ground of it, to which Mr. Plumb cor- 
rectly replies: “In regard to the last marriage, the facts 
are, that Mr. Davis never was consulted by Mr. and Mrs. 
Love, nor was it agreed between them that Mrs. Love 
should be divorced from her husband and marry him. So 
far from this being the case, Mr. and Mrs. Love had agreed 
upon a separation before either of them ever saw A. J. Davis, 
and she proceeded to obtain a divorce, only when her hus- 
band had become devotedly attached to another lady.” And 
the sentence might have closed by saying that Mr. Love has 
since married the object of his devotion ! 

This correction was published in the Gazette, together 
with a short note of commendation on the public teachings 
and private character of Mr. Davis, by Mr. John Gage. 
Besides, Mr. Gage characterized the statements in the arti- 
cle referred to, ‘‘ malicious falsehoods.” : 

In the face and eyes of all these corrections, this unprin- 
cipled editor has vamped over, enlarged and published a 
new edition of the malicious slander in the Weekly Gazette 
of 7th November, inst. “ Bray a fool in the mortar and he 
will be none the wiser.’ Pitching into Jackson’s lecture 
at Searl’s Hall, this editor makes him say that a large pro- 
portion of mankind have no souls. Wonder if he’s one of 
them ? 

Though the intention of Mrs. Love to procure a divorce 
was kept from the knowledge of most of her relatives and 
friends till obtained, their approval of it was most 
HEARTY AND UNANIMOUS ! 

This brings me to the question of her marriage with A. 
J. Davis. Read the “ Magic Staff,” and there find a truth- 
ful relation of his first perilous adventure in that direction, 
and his reception at the “ Robinson House,” and among the 
relatives—the opposition and indignation he had to brave. 
And why all this? What troubled so many of us? Just 
what troubles the Gazette now, and all other ranting oppo- 
sers—simply that we were then and they are séz/ orthodox 


46 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-EOOK. 


believers, and Mr. Davis was a disbeliever—infidel, heretic, 
‘¢ moral leper !” 

We partook somewhat of this same sectarian prejudice— 
hence the cold shoulder, almost indignity, which he met 
with; nothing else. We had heard of the strange phenom- 
enadown at Poughkeepsie—a young infidel insinuating infidel 
doctrines; he would contaminate us all—especially his in- 
tended ; did not believe in the divine record—in the claims 
set up for the Bible as an inspired book. Horrible! Away 
with him ! crucify him! His approach to our family was 
felt to be like that of a huge dragon with seven heads, two 
tails and ten horns, about to pitch in among us !—and for 
this reason only; this was the sum of his offending. We 
knew nothing against him otherwise. He appeared like a 
gentleman, and I think he must have had his magic staff 
with him, and used it as he alleges, else he could not have 
endured his treatment so patiently. 

This, Mr. Geer, is the ground of your bitter opposition. 
Nothing else. Examine and see. Your articles under re- 
view unmistakably show it. It is the ground of most, if not 
all the opposition to them and their labors—Religious In- 
tolerance | 

Said I toa clergyman here not long since, “‘ Fowler and 
Combe are good guides on the subject of life and health.” 
He retorted sharply, ‘“‘ They are infidels, disbelievers in the 
Bible—A. J. Davis with them—all of one school.” Hence 
the inference is that their words and works are worthless. 
This is the spirit of Bible orthodoxy—of sectarianism. 
‘Work in my harness or die!” ‘They are afraid to have 
the claims of the Bible discussed; it must not be—hands 
off. So children are taught and made to believe; hence, 
they never put off childish things. Orthedoxy and secta- 
rianism are in danger from the new philosophy, and it must 
be resisted, and where argument fails, a resort to personali- 
ties is had, and the believers in the “ father of lies ” invent 
falsehoods to ruin the reputation of reformers, and limit their 
influence. It is said by this editor that Mr. Davis, at a 
certain time, came near being mobbed. Perhaps it was at 
the Hartford Bible Convention—the first gathering, I sup- 
pose, in this or any other country, to discuss and question 
the claims of the Bible—which barely escaped being mobbed 


ee pe ee ee 


FROM THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME. 47 


by the orthodox Bible believers there assembled—Mr. Davis 
being a member of that convention. 

Mother Earth, by the fruits of this intolerance, is paved 
with human skeletons, both Pagan and Christian, Mahomet- 


an and Jew. The Catholic Church, whose haggard ‘“‘ face is 


all stained with causeless massacres of countless millions,” 
is the foremost in Christendom, and the Protestant scarcely 
a whit behind, of which fire, fagot, the stake, the scaffold, 
are swift witnesses. But there is still hope, though the war 
upon reformers is no less inveterate than in gone-by ages, 
yet not so bloody. 

But, “can a man be born when he is old?” £Yes/ I 
have experienced a new birth—crawled out of the old or- 
thodox shell—I feel like a new man—sectarian shackles 
offi—have sought the truth, and the “truth has made me 
free.” 

Reader, before closing, I will “ tell my experience” brief- 
ly. Some three years since, Rev. J. Copeland, of this place, 
a Presbyterian clergyman, gave notice that he would deliv- 
era discourse on the divine authority of the Bible. his 
awakened my curiosity to hear. What! thought I, who is 
calling in question the Bible at this late day? Why, after 
the millions on millions that have been sacrificed, in time, 
labor, blood and treasure, is not that question settled yet? 
I heard the sermon, and then went to the examination of the 
subject for myself with a will. I had been somewhat famil- 
iar with the Bible, but was now resolved to be more so. 
I examined on. Last fall, at the close of the exerting cam- 
paign for “ Freedom and Fremont,” having taken an active 
part, my mind was not inclined to rest. 

Having leisure through the winter, Tread. First took up 
“ Nature’s Divine Revelations,” compared its theory of the 
creation with that ofthe Bible. Next, «‘ Goodrich’s Histo- 
ry of all Nations,” to know more particularly of the religion 
and sacred books of all nations, especially the more primi- 
tive; when I found that ancient mythology and our Bible 
are all off the same piece. 

That the claims set up for it as an inspired book, togath- 
er with the Koran and all other so-called sacred eS are 
priestly impositions on mankind. 

That God never wrote and spread out before the universe 
but one book, and that the book of Nature, through which 


48 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


we may look up to Nature’s God—and if man will tune his 
life to the music, order, and harmony of her laws, he will - 
stand up in God’s own image. The world will be reformed. 

The Bible is full of contradictions, fictions, absurdities, 
and impossibilities. It supports and approves lying, steal- 
ing, swindling, robbery and murder, war, slavery, and poly- 
gamy, and is as much for intemperance as against it. It is 
a libel and slander on the Great Jehovah-to charge him 
with indicting such a book. True; some good precepts are 
found in it; this is no evidence of its divinity. Confucius 
declared the golden rule five centuries before Christ. Frank- 
lin and a thousand others, spoke and wrote many good 
things ; many more than the Bible contains. 

Now, in conclusion, I say to all whom it may concern, es- 
pecially the “ Ranters,” examine this subject. The days of 
brute force and gag laws are past. The claims of the Bible 
are being examined. It must stand or fall on its own mer- 
its, like other works. It must pass an ordeal now which it 
never before passed—and it will be found wanting! Yea, 
its grandest, strongest positions are overturned by its own 
theories so clearly that there is no escape. 

Mines of treasure have been expended, in the shape of 
money, time, and labor, in building temples of worship, edu- 
cating and supporting a priesthood, all for the soul’s eternal 
interest, after the Bible pattern. Now let this vast tide of 
wealth take a new direction—be applied more to the bodily 
comforts—the physical and mental wants of man—to re- 
model society—reform, refine, and elevate the race—pro- 
mote and extend the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of 
man—prepare him to live right here, and the hereafter will 
take care of itself. C. RosInson. 


WITHDRAWAL FROM THE CHURCH. 


June 22, 1857. 


To my brethren of the Second Freewill Baptist Church 
in Clarendon : 

I wish you to give me a letter of dismissal from your 
church, for the following reasons : 


THE BIBLE AND SECTARIANISM. 49 


1st. I would not say to you that “ Nature’s Divine Reve- 
lations,” by A. J. Davis, or the “ Harmonial Philosophy,” 
by the same author, are better moral guides than the Bible, 
or a truer history of the ‘Creation ;” but I do say, that, in 
my opinion, whatever good Orthodoxy may have done in a 
ruder state of the world, it has ceased to do any now. Sec- 
tarianism can do but little more good, if it ever did any. 
The churches are a dead weight to all reform movements. 
They fought the Temperance cause till it was made popular 
by the “ Infidel’? world. Indeed, they never have taken 
hold unitedly init. So with the Anti-Slavery cause and 
other reforms. Church members, priests and laymen, are 
just as filthy—smoking, chewing, spitting, perhaps drink- 
ing, and lusting after “ filthy lucre’’ if not the flesh—as other 
men. Many of them make the Bible support and sustain 
Slavery, Polygamy, Intemperance, Popery, Protestantism, 
and all Sectarianism. 

2d. So then I have come to the firm conviction that the 
world needs now a new race of Reformers—purer and holier 
than the Church affords, more philanthropic, loving and 
harmonious, less sensual and selfish, requiring less money 
than it takes to move the sectarian machinery. A new 
Theology, too, more consistent and rational, more in harmo- 
ny with natural laws, and of more universal application, than 
the Orthodox—more vital religion, with less formality, hy- 
pocrisy, sanctity and fanaticism—more honesty with less 
eraft and duplicity—drawn and held together by fitness and 
mutual attractions instead of creeds. ‘This new class of Re- 
formers should embrace all good and pure men and women, 
in and out of the Church. C. RoBINsoNn. 


THE BIBLE AND SECTARIANISM. 
Jan. 28, 1858. 


[From the Excelsior.] 


. The Bible, the reverenced and believed in so many hun- 
dreds of years, and by so many millions of people, has no just 
claims, nevertheless, to a sacred book, inspired by God. 
The claims set up in it are false !—Nor can an error, ever 
so venerable with years, ever so sincerely and persistently 


50 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


believed in, be made truth. The careful student of history 
will not fail to see a striking resemblance between it and 
ancient mythology. It is a true likeness of that model. 


Like all other so-called sacred books, which are legion, itis ~ 


a priestly imposition on mankind. It is full of conflicting 


and contradictory statements, absurdities, fictions, fabu- — 


lous stories, and obscene recitals—supports lying, stealing, 
swindling, robbery, murder, slavery, polygamy, cruelty, war, 
rapine, blood, and slaughter. It is just such a production 
as might be expected to be written in the rude, undeveloped 
age it was, and a probable history of the same. Such a 
book, written now, would encounter nothing but derision and 
ridicule. It is a foul slander and libel to charge the Al- 
mighty with lending himself to such a work. 

God’s book was not written on parchment or paper, nor 
left to fallible or designing man to remodel at pleasure. It 
is the great book of Nature, spread out before all men, and 
worlds of men, and he who runs may read. It will astonish 
the Bible believer when he comes to know, which he may 
do by impartial investigation, that the book itself is obnox- 
jous to all the above allegations, and more. Out of its 
own mouth it stands condemned. It is a swift witness 
against itself. Let mankind examine it—it is high time to 
“know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 

In a historical point of view, the religions of mankind 
are subjects of the greatest importance, because religious 
rivalries have been the occasion of the wars which have 
desolated the world ! 

Nearly every kingdom and empire has employed some re- 
ligion as the main instrument of its support. Wherever 
there has been a state religion the priest has become the 
tool of despotism—and thus history will show that some of 
the greatest promoters of a particular faith, have, at the 
same time, been among the sternest and bloodiest of ty- 
rants. 

According to Goodrich and others, there are 220,000,000 
Buddhists, 60,000,000 Brahmins, 96,000,000 Mahometans, 
4,000,000 Jews, 139,000,000 Roman Catholics, 62,000,000 
Greek Catholics, 60,000,000 Protestants, and 210,000,000 
of other religions, in the world. 

Let us, in this connection, take some examples of the costs 
of supporting the religions of the world. 


* 


{ 
i a ae i a i 


THE BIBLE AND SECTARIANISM. 51 


1. The United States. The following statistics are from 
the census of 1850, which exhibit the startling aggregate of 
not less than three hundred million dollars of capital ab- 
sorbed in the business of taking care of the souls of men 
under our voluntary system. There are in the United 
States 38,200 churches for public worship, of which 1,200 
are Catholic--having accommodations for 14,300,000 persons 
and of a total value of church property of $87,500,000. The 
number of church members is 500,000, and the regular 
clergymen 26,842, with occasional ones making a total of 
30,000 ministers. Employed atan average salary of $500, 
these 30,000 ministers would receive $15,090,000 annually. 
_To provide for this expense would require a capital of 
$187,500,000 at 8 per cent. interest. To this capital add 
the value of church property, $87,500,000, and you have a 
total of $275,000,000. Now add to this sum—which is a 
low estimate—$25,000,000 for the time spent in worship— 
the money and time expended in the education of the minis- 
try, erecting and endowing theological colleges and semina- 
ries, missionary, tract and bible society enterprises, and you 
have a grand total of $300,000,000 to support the churches 
of the United States, the income of which, at 8 per cent., 
would amount to $28,000,000 per annum! 

How much longer will the people continue to pay these 
enormous sums to support a false theology? A system, to 
say the least, under which there is as much iniquity cloaked 
and practiced as there is good-done by it. A Presbyterian 
clergyman was asked this question—* Is there not as much 
iniquity cloaked and practiced under the Bible as good done 
by it?’ “Yes,” he responded promptly, “more! much 
more !”—“ Then,” I replied, “we can do without it very 
wel]. And more—when the belief of its divinity shall 
cease—its divine authority taken from it-—-when it shall lose 
this power and consequence, and become of no more author- 
ity than other books—Josephus, Rollins, Goldsmith, Gib- 
bon or Goodrich, of our own country and times—which it 
really is not, then Popery, Slavery, Polygamy, Mormonism, 
and sectarianism of all kinds, in so far as they cloak and 
support themselves by the inspired word, so-called, will of 
necessity go by the board.” 

Now, let us take a few examples from the Church of Eng- 


° 


52 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


land, and see some of the exactions of an “established 
church,” under the compulsory system : 

The twenty-five State Bishops of England divide among 
them annually $900,000—about $40,000 each ; requiring a 
capital of $11,250,000 to produce it at 8 per cent. Eleven 
Irish Bishops left $9,375,000 at their death, besides their 
fat living through life, which, if we denominate it as capital, 
added to $11,250,000, would make a total of $20,625,000. 

The amount divided among these Irish bishops, or bish- 
ops of the English Church in Ireland, annually, is $800,000, 
and the rents and profits of 670,000 acres of land in addi- 
tion. Estimate the land at $40 per acre, it would amount 
to $27,600,000, and the capital to produce $800,000 at 8 
per cent. would be $37,600,000 ; add the above, and you have 
$58,225,000. 

The revenue of the Protestant Church in Ireland is 
$4,000,000—requiring a capital of $50,000,000 to produce it. 

‘Thus we have a capital of $108,225,000; the income of 
which would be abéut $9,000,000. Thus, we see that these 
twenty-five “ children of the kingdom,” heads of the Eng- 
lish Church, who profess to believe in a book that teaches, 
and who, doubtless, teach to their flock, “Lay ye not up 
treasures on earth—money is the root of all evil, ”’ receive 
an income of $9,000,000 annually, ground from the face of 
the poor—requiring a capital of more than $100,000,000 to 
produce it; besides, the common clergy recieve, in tithes 
alone, aside from salaries, $52,421,000 annually, requiring a 
capital of $650,000,000 to produce it. Add $108,000,000 
and you have a sum total of $758,000,000. 

From the statistics I am consulting, (Goodrich, pages 
966, 969) it is impossible to ascertain, imperfect as they are, 
how much salary, besides the tithes, the common clergy 
are paid, what the cost of church-building, of the theologi- 
cal, educational, missionary, tract, and other contingencies, 
or the support of the Catholic Church in Great Britain. 
But enough is here revealed to show that the aggregate is 
truly enormous—aside from the cost of the bloody wars oc- 
casioned by sectarian rivalry. There need be no surprise 
that the English national debt is more than she can ever pay, 
to say nothing of the aristocracy, which costs as much to sup- 
port as the church. No wonder that she has many mil- 


Oe ee ee a 





CLAIMS OF THE BIBLE AND CHURCH. bo 


lions struggling for bread—that the Irish peasants live in 
mud huts with one apartment, with a hole in the side, an- 
swering at once for door, chimney, and window—their wa- 
ges being a shilling a day—that four millions out of eight 
millions of her population can neither read nor write. 

Taking the above statistics as an index both of America. 
and England, no wonder that, with heaving bosom, the 
world is initiating a struggle to cast off the mighty incubus 
—the utter rottenness and corruption—the vast cage of un- 
clean birds, full of dead men’s bones, and sighing for a new 
era, a new, cheaper, more natural and rational religion. 

We estimate that ten per cent. of the world’s wealth is 
absorbed in support of its systems of religion, and we may 
further safely estimate that fifteen per cent. is consumed in 
intoxicating drinks, another ten per cent. for tobacco and 
opium, thirty-five per cent. in all. No wonder that society 
is wrecked, and the nations lie i in wretchedness, degradation, 
and ruin ! C Ropinson. 


‘CLAIMS OF THE BIBLE AND CHURCH 
CONSIDERED—THE DISEASE. 


February, 1858. 
[From the Age of Progress. ] 


Look over the Christian world—our own country especi- 
ally, in every hamlet, town and city, and what do we see ? 
We see wretchedness, destitution and crime—-grinding self- 
ishness and its fruits, affluence and poverty. ‘These ex- 
tremes meet, more particularly and conspicuously in cities 
and large towns; magnificent palaces and hovels of pover- 
ty promiscuously mixed. Whole blocks of brothels on one 
side of the street, and their counterpart, a string of whole- 
sale and retail dispensaries of distilled destruction, on the 
opposite side ! 

The harlot and the drunkard sit under the windows of 
the temples of worship ; these sanctuaries casting their tall 
shadows darkly upon the gloomy walls of surrounding pri- 
son “Tombs,” full of living men and women putrid with 
crime! Look along and observe the asylum for juvenile 


54 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


delinquents, from whose ranks issues forth this festering 
flood of ripe transgressors. 

See, too the poor-houses, jails, penitentiaries, and 
State prisons, all crowded with victims of our false order of 
society, under our Bible system of theology, which keeps 
these mighty receptacles of misdirected humanity in requisi- 
tion. 

See the poor Indians melting away before the advancing 
tide of counterfeit civilization—before the avarice of the 
“* pale face’’ armed with the Bible, the Rifle, and the Whis- 
ky bottle! Behold the negro chafing in his chains under a 
slavery-sustaining Church and Bible. Nor have Christian, 
any more than pagan nations, “ ceased to learn’? and wage 
war. Indeed, what is our own Christian government about 
at this hour? Why, just administering the salutary, the 
highly practical and customary Christian remedy for reli- 
gious quarrels——lead and steel, upon a horde of religious fa- 
natics, who are following the fashion of the Fathers of the 
Church—the most illustrious personages who figure in the 
“sacred word.” 

See the Church of Christ (so claimed.) itself, coming down 
to us, through misty ages, broken in a thousand fragments, 
stained with every sin—reeling with drunkenness and reek- 
ing with the blood of martyrs! I 

I do not pretend to say that the Protestant portion of the 
Christian chuich are a body of drunken men, but I do say, 
in so far as our own State and country is concerned, that the 
temperance cause is crushed out by the inaction of the 
church. Not that there are not devoted and zealous labor- 
ers belonging thereto, but by the leaning of so many of its 
members in the opposite direction, from appetite, interest or 
other cause, in order to keep peace in Zion, the influence of 
the church is neutralized in the great reform. But the Ca-. 
tholic portion of the church, universally, judging from what 
specimens we have in this country, from the priest down, 
are addicted to intemperance. Hence the out-and-out, tur- 
bulent opposition of “this branch of Zion” to prohibition 
‘and the temperance enterprises generally. And as the 
“world” could not succeed in a final triumph, and the 
church would not help, (one branch being in vehement hos- 
tility to it,) between the two, the cause lies prostrate and 


MONEY—TIMBER—FENCING. 5d 


bleeding under the feet of the enemy, or driven from the field 
by its foes; and the “ breathing-holes of hell’ all over the 
land are in full blast, breeding discord and crushing human- 
ity ; more than $13,000,000 worth of the liquid death being 
annually manufactured in the State of New York alone! 
And as this branch of intemperance increases, so, too, its coun- 
terpart, tobacco-using. See now nearly all our young men 
sucking and puffing—their organisms saturated—pickled 
through / their breaths the breath of miasm, and their gar- 
ments freighted with the noxious odor. 

Thus, in the midst—under the operation and influence of 
this ponderous system of Bible Theology—we get a vigorous 
growth, and reap an abundant harvest of evils of every 
magnitude and vice of every grade. It is a righteous judg- 
ment to judge a tree by its fruits—a system by its effects ; 
and as its. fruits are more evil than good, the Bible system 
of orthodox religion should be removed to give place to 
something more hopeful to humanity—more simple-natured 
and consistent—more in harmony with nature and with God. 

This system has proved a hopeless failure. Society can 
scarcely be made worse by its removal. Gale. 


A 


MONEY —TIMBER—FENCING. 


July, 1858. 
[From the Freepouit (Ill.) Journal.) 


Ep. JourNAL: I have spent the months of May and 
June, and the first half of this, July, in Wisconsin. ‘Trav- 
eled, in the meantime, twice across the State, from east 
to west, within sixty miles, in two different portions of it, 
both south and north of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers—in 
the south-eastern and north-western parts of the State— 
sometimes by private and then by public conveyance, by 
stage and railroad, and am now sojourning for a few weeks 
in the renowned “ Prairie State,” and with your consent I 
will dot down a few things I have seen and heard. 

Firstly, there is the terrible groaning, loud and deep, un- 
der the ‘‘ money pressure.” ‘ Scarcity of money !” “ Want 
of money!” ‘This is the universal cry ! 


56 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRKAP-BOOK. 


Now there is no effect without a cause. There is no 
other true philosophy in business or morals, matter, motion, — 
or anything else. What is the cause, then, of this want of 
money ? Simply because the people have got in debt too 
much—they have tried the credit system too far, have run 
too fast, lived on tick, absorbing their income in prospect, a 
year, perhaps more, ahead, and now, when produce and 
labor go down to ebb tide, their crops and labor will not 
pay their debts and leave a living, for all must have their 
daily bread, fuel, clothing, &c. And nowis the time for the 
money sharks—the carcass is here and the eagles gather! 
Not content with the allowable interest, from ten to twelve 
per cent. in all the Western States—which, if long contin- 
ued, will crush any country—twenty-five, fifty, and seventy 
per cent. is frequently demanded, and, in desperation, some- 
times allowed, like the old miller who took the grist and 
left the toll! j 

Well, stranger, you ask, what is the remedy? Why, pay 
up, if you can, and “pay as you go” ever after; live with- 
in your means, and so much extra money will not be 
required, and, from necessity, interest or usury will go down, 
and capital and labor work more in concert. 

Without this step toward more rigid economy—although 
the country through which we pass, is, most of it, beautiful 
and productive, well calculated for the habitation of civil- 
ized communities—without this economy, very many of its 
present inhabitants must sell out and give place to more 
prudent and careful men and women. 

The want of money is painful and absorbing, though, 
doubtless, but a temporary evil. But there is a want 
among these prairies, which is more permanent—the want 
of timber. ‘To a stranger from a timbered country this is a 
painful lack. Notwithstanding, you speak of this lack of 
timber to a resident citizen, like as not he will readily re- 
ply, “ We have enough—more’n we want!” as though thus 
another might be made as blind as he would fain be. 

Still the truth exists. The want of money is doubtless a 
transient evil, but the want of timber is both immediate and 
remote. Still, I have faith that the same economy and in- 
dustry that will overcome the former evil will ultimately, 
in a good measure, overcome the latter. 





MONEY—TIMBER—Y¥YENCING. : 57 


Then, stranger, you ask further, what is your plan to 
supply the present want of timber? ‘This is an important 
question, and perhaps my suggestions may never be accept- 
ed and fullowed by any one. But here they are; they cost 
but little, either to write, print, or read them, nor would the 
outlay in trying the experiment, should it fail, involve any 
considerable loss. 

First, then, fence for the purpose, and prepare, say, to 
commence with, an acre of prairie ground; procure hard and 
soft maple seed from any part of the country where they 
abound, likewise locust seed, acorns, if you choose, walnuts 
and beech nuts; elm is good for shade, white ash, brown 
ash, too, for timber and wood. Sow them in the fall, sepa- 
rately and thinly, on separate parcels of the ground, broad- 
cast and drag in. If the seeds germinate, come up, keep 
them carefully fenced, and fire away from them, and weeds, 
if needs be, and I venture to say that in forty years, fifty at 
most, some of these maple trees, if not too thick together, 
will make from oue to two cords of wood each, and each 
locust tree make considerable of a string of fence. Both 
bodies and branches may be worked in. 

Forty-five years ago this month, the writer moved from 
Paris, Oneida County, New York, to the western part of 
the State, then mostly unsettled. As the woods were 
being cleared away, some hard maple saplings were left 
standing, and some were set out, perhaps of ten years’ 
growth, in or on the side of yards, gardens, &c.,; and now, 
in forty-five years, will make from one and a half to two 
and a half cords each. Soft maple will grow more rapid- 
ly, smoothly, and thriftily, than hard. 

If your experiment succeeds, of which I have not the 
least doubt, for wherever we travel I see that both kinds of 
maple and locust trees are planted and grow finely, then let 
ten acres be thus planted on every hundred, with the addi- 
tion of an acre, more or less, of apple seeds sown in the cen- 
ter. In afew years you would have nice artificial groves 
clothing the whole prairies where now a great blank prevails, 
both ornamental and useful—useful in more ways than one 
—to transplant from, for wood and timber, for fence and 
other uses, good to break the fierce winds that now sweep 
unobstructed over these vast western plains. 


58 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


Fencing is intimately connected with timber, and is an 
important item in farm pursuits, as well as it. The ex- 
pense of the one depends cn the supply of the other. Tim- 
ber fences only are now under review. 

What, then, is the cheapest method of building it, and ~ 
the best ? Here are my suggestions. ‘The way to build it 
so as to husband both labor and materials, especially the 
latter, is as follows: 

The posts may be split or sawed, or set whole if the cuts 
are too small for either. Cedar and oak are best for posts 
—if sawed tapering will stand firmest in the ground. Pine 
or hemlock is best for boards; other timber will do—oak, 
soft maple, chestnut, ash, &c. 

For sawing large logs, a mill with a vertical saw will 
do, but for small timber a circular saw must be used, and 
the mill so constructed that you may slit poles into fence 
boards not over three inches in diameter at the top end, if 
you desire to saw so small ones. In this way a pole large 
enough for a top-rider on a worm rail fence will make boards 
for a whole length, and the timber usuall,; used for stakes 
and caps in’such would make the posts. 

In some sections where we traveled, where sheep and 
hogs are not “free commoners,” three boards, four or five 
inches in width and one in thickness, the bottom one placed 
one and a half or two feet from the ground, fence well 
against cattle. 

Now for the construction: If you wish to fence a whole 
farm at once, or make a long string, stake out the line or 
lines, take your team and plow a land, say from 12 to 20 
feet wide, turning the furrows outward from the intended 
fence. On the line make a deep dead furrow, then draw 
your line again and dig your holes in the dead furrow, 
(which are now half dug with the plow,) to the desired depth, 
put up and steady your posts with a little of the surround- 
ing loose earth thrown into the holes, spike on a board be- - 
low where the surface of the ground will be when the set- 
ting of the posts is finished, to keep them from being raised 
up by the frost or swayed by the wind, take your team and 
plow again, and finish the work of setting the posts by turn- 
‘ing the furrows back upon your board and posts, nail on 
your top boards, and the fence is done. Or use the post 





FARM AND FIRESIDE. 59 


auger, or spade, or cleaver and long-handled ditching shovel 
for digging post holes, as you may choose. 
C. RoBINSoN. 


FARM AND FIRESIDE. 


Nov. 15, 1858. 


{From the Orleans American. ] 


We left Holley, self and better half, 5th May last, to 
spend the summer at the West, among children, relatives 
and friends, scattered over the country, and a part of the 
winter at the South, where you see we now hail from. We 
have now traveled about 3,000 miles; 500 by private con- 
veyance, by stage, a little by water, and 2,500 by railroad. 

Arrived at Columbus, Wisconsin, May 7th, traveled con- 
siderably over the State, and left it July 15, for IMlinois— 
traveled some in that State, through Chicago, Freeport, in 
the northern part ; Dixon, Dement, De Kalb, Mendota, and 
Galesburg, in the more central portion of it. Left the State 
and arrived at Battle Creek, Michigan, August 9, sojourned 
in the southern parts of this State till September 20, when 
we left for Medina, in the northern part of Ohio, where we 
sojourned till October 14, when we passed on to North Lew- 
isburg, in central Ohio, and on November 8, passed on to 
-Cincinnati—spent a day and night there, then down the Ohio 
river, on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad across the State 
of Indiana, crossing the Wabash, its western boundary, at 
Vincennes, where we are again in [llinois—passed on to 
Sandoval, and then took the Illinois Central again for Cai- 
ro; then took steamboat across the mouth of the Ohio, and 
down the Mississippi river 20 miles to Columbus, Kentucky; 
and here we are ina Slave State for the first time in our 
lives, though I suppose we were between two Slave States, 
Kentucky and Missouri, on leaving the middle of the Ohio 
river at its junction. Staid over night at Columbus, took 
the 8 o’clock A. M. train on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, 
17 miles across the south-west corner of Kentucky, to the 
Tennessee line, thence here, Bolivar, l'ennessee, 78 miles, 
November 12. We have now fairly entered the Cotton 


60 FATHER. ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


and “ Nigger ”’ country. Expect to leave for home in time 
to pass through Washington before the close of Congress, 
4th. March—then on through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New 
York city, Albany, Utica, Rochester, home / 

We have traveled most of the time by day-light, and as 
we are farmers, nothing else! and of course always looking 
through farmers’ eyes, we may say something interesting on 
it, and its connected subjects, if equal to the work. 

I will conclude this article, by relating an incident of home 
life in the South. 

Last Saturday was a sunny day; an old esteemed friend 
from Illinois, and self, walked down to the post-office, quarter — 
of a mile from our stopping-place, situated hard by a depot 
on the Mississippi Central and Tennessee Railroad. Opposite 
the post-office stands the court-house, a brick structure 
much the size and appearance of the old court-house in 
Orleans County. 

Along the yard fence were paraded a dozen wigs and a 
slave trader. My friend and I stepping up, he said, Gents, 
you wish to buy? I guess not, said I, short of funds to-day 
—what’s the price? ‘That big boy [pretty well whitened 
out] $1500, weight 160 ; that girl, first rate house servant, 
good cook, neat all round 12%, all plump, right age 32, 
weighs 119; pick one out, sir, and I'll price it quick. ‘That 
boy, $950, weight 72,age 13. This 74, weight 63, age 11. 
A mighty smart lot, all plump right; where do you reside, 
gentlemen ? In town, sir. Where were these from? ‘This 
from Mississippi, that Alabama, from Virginia, all round, any 
where; I pick them up where I can find them; I follow 
the business. My friend and I sloped without making a 
purchase to-day. 

They seemed quite indifferent, as did also all around, 
other darkies in the streets, and whites. We saw most of 
the gang next day, unsold, we supposed, appearing quite gay 
and unconcerned. 





December, 1, 1858. 


There are two physical and two habitual evils, existing 
not exclusively, but prevailing more extensively at the 
West and South than at the East and North, which I 
will mention at the outset of this communication. 








FARM AND FIRESIDE. 61 


First, the rage for large farms, and consequent bad hus- 
bandry, and so much distance between neighbors, and con- 
sequent difficulty of keeping up schools—press of business 
and cares—‘“ too many irons in the fire,” some burning— 
loss in consequence——-neglect of the gardens, both fruit and 
vegetable. ‘This neglect is universal both North and South, 
full as much in the former as in the latter. Weeds! 
Weeds !! Weeds !!!—this the rule with rare exceptions. 

IT venture the opinion that more than $5,000,000 are lost 
in the United States annually by this neglect, besides a 
ereat deal of enjoyment derived from a good garden, both 
in its luxury as food and beauty in adornment. One hour 
of labor spent in the garden is worth two in any other farm 
husbandry in substantial benefit to a family as food-produc- 
ing labor. 

This is all wrong, nor do I expect to right it much by 
what little scolding I can do, though my propensity is strong 
that way. Germans, never so proverbial for nicety in this 
department, become lax by mingling with Americans. It is 
not because we care not, but because we will not. You 
find the tobacco field—producing a plant that all animals 
shun and loathe, and but for perverted taste, would be ab- 
horred by man-—most carefully and delicately trimmed, 
made exquisitely nice and clear of weeds, when, right by its 
side, in the same inclosure even, you may see all useful 
vegetables struggling for dear life among their enemies— 
weeds and insects, with. very little, if any, attention from the 
owner. 

This brings me to my second point—to speak of the use 
and abuse of liquor and tobacco. Their abuse is in their use, 
and mankind are most shamefully abusing themselves with 
them. God’s earth is made to produce nothing that so cur- 
ses the race! A whisky sot, or a tobacco sot! how loath- 
some a lump of misdirected humanity. How old earth 
steams and reels and smokes with the noxious miasma. 

In our own little portion of the globe, the South beats 
the North in these dirty habits. Pickeled bipeds are the rule ; 
—a teetotaller would be a curiosity, rare as snow in summer. 
Here all drink, smoke and chew hugely. We heard a spe- 
cimen of humanity consoling his fellow, who was complain- 
ing that his drunken habits were proving ruinous to him, by 





62 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


saying that he had been on a drunken bust six weeks, and 
by living on meat he stood it well. ‘“ Live on meat,” said 
he, ‘and whisky won’t hurt you.” 

That any people can rise to refinement till they arise 

from this animalized, lower, dead sea level, is impossible. 
They may grow in intellect, genius and art, but refined — 
never. 
_ Physical Slavery has three redeeming traits. Ist—It is 
not voluntary, 2d—it is some pecuniary benefit, 3rd—it is 
sectional ; whereas, this seductive slavery to appetite has 
not one. It is self-inflicted, inexcusable and universal—robs 
individuals and nations of immense physical and moral 
strength, and incalculable sums of money, the United States 
of not less than $100,000,000 annually, which is worse than 
wasted. The negro is less hopelessly enslaved than the 
smoker or drinker. Oy Tt. 


“A HUNDRED DOLLAR PRIZE.” 


September 15, 1859. 


‘“‘The Church Anti-Slavery Society, at its business meeting, held in 
Worcester, Massachusetts, on the 29th of March, passed a resolution 
offering a premium of $100 for the best tract, showing that the Bible 
gives no warrant or allowance for chattel slavery.”—W. Y. Tribune, 
April 16. 

Better let it be as it is; it is the easiest and cheapest 
way. It would cost no one a hundred dollars to show the 
opposite. Omit the short word “no,” and change “or” to 
“and,” so that the “ enacting clause” -of the resolution shall 
read, the Bible gives warrant and allowance for chattel sla- 
very, and the truth is told. The record is so plain that none 
but the willfully blind can mistake its meaning. A single 
dollar will pay for copying the record. We know that the 
Bible, by skillful, lawyer-like handling and rending, may be 
made to prove or disprove almost anything. A great many 
tunes have been and can still be played upon it, and many 


changes rung; but if English words can be framed into sen-. 


_tences to mean and prove anything — then the Bible sup- 
ports slavery, andif that book is authority, the slaveholder 
is right in enslaving his fellow man—tright in claiming the 
Bible as a chief corner-stone of the institution. Every anti- 
slavery man or society, therefore, to be consistent, should 





A HUNDRED DOLLAR PRIZE. 63 


either take the Bible as a human production, with no more 
authority or binding force than any other history, the Koran, 
Veda, or any other so-called sacred book, or give up their 
anti-slavery principles. 

Nor is American slavery, as now existing, the whole of sla- 
very authorized by that book. In addition to the enslave- 
ment of the black, we may enslave our own white citi- 
zens—our ‘own brethren.” ‘'T'o the proof. 

“Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set be- 
fore them. If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall 
serve ; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. 
If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he 
were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his mas- 
ter have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons and 
daughters ,the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and 
he shall go out by himself.” 

So if a female slave, the wife of a male slave, have chil- 
dren, her children and herself, by this law, are held in per- 
petual bondage, and the man wanders off alone. “ But if 
the man servant,” under these circumstances, “ shall plainly 
say, | love my master, my wife and my children, I will not 
go out free; then his master shall bring him unto the judges ; 
he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and 
his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he 
shall serve him forever!” A pretty apt contrivance to 
induce a bond-man to choose perpetual servitude with his 
wife and children! ‘And if a man sell his daughter to be 
a maid servant, she shall not go out as the men servants 
do.” Here is another condition where the slavery of the 
female is perpetual. Exodus xxi: 1 to 7, inclusive. 

This is Bible slavery for our “own brethren ;”’ and under 
this regulation, American citizens would be justified in en- 
slaving—buying and selling each other. But we have hard- 
ly come up to the Bible standard yet in this particular ; but 
in another branch of Bible slavery our system corresponds 
to the letter! Hear: 

“ Both thy bond-men and bond-maids which thou shalt 
have, shall be of the heathen round about you : of them shall - 
ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. 

Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn 
among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that 
are with you, which they begat in your land, and they shall 


64 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


be your possession !—And ye shall take them as an inherit- 
ance for your children after you, to inherit them for a pos- 
~ session ; they shall be your bond-men forever!” Lev. xxv: 
44th, 45th and part of 46th verses. This is a clincher, and in 
order to make us common people believe that the rivet is 
hardly driven home, Dr. Hikok, Professor of Moral Science 
in Union College, in treating on this subject, omits the words, 
“ They shall be your bond-men forever.’ No wonder; and 
how many more D. D’s and lesser lights have undertaken to 
warp, wrest and abridge this plain, ‘straightforward, unmis- 
takable Bible recognition of human or inhuman bondage, 
regulated by law, I cannot tell. We will wait and see what 
will be done under this $100 stimulus. 





THE BUFFALO CONVENTION. 


Sept. 30,1859. 


{From Fred Douglass’ Paper.] 


Mr. Epiror: Having no opportunity to criticise the 
proceedings of the Convention on the spot, and even had 
the time allowed, it would have been presumption in one of 
my poor voice and little practice in public speaking, to 
make the attempt in that large hall, capable of seating over 
two thousand persons, being well filled, and before a large 
circle of men and women with life-long experiences on the 
forum—lI ask, therefore, a place in your columns for a short 
review, especially of the anti-slavery question. 

I know that your paper is chiefly devoted to the deliver- 
ance of your down-trodden race, (a sublime object ;) yet 
you will indulge me with a few thoughts in the outset on 
other topics discussed by the Convention, that of Maternity 
being the chiefest of them all. 

I was sorry that the apt elaborator, Henry C. Wright, 
when he said that in that critical and interesting period, the 
conditions and surroundings of the woman should be of the 
best character, in order that the offspring should be nobly 
born, had not included the husband and father as being the 
first and fittest person under heaven to furnish and continue 
those conditions and surroundings. 





U. S. CONSTITUTION AN ANTI-SLAVERY INSTRUMENT. 65 


I was sorry, after the introduction, by Mr. Partridge, © 
of that gigantic project of a census, that some speaker to 
that question had not given out an earnest exhortation to the 
assembly, urging them, that, while the process of making 
up tables of figures on the sums expended for intoxicating 
drinks and their effects, and of tobacco and its effects, &c., 
self-salvation had not been enforced, so that society might be 
so progressed that these statistics would be measurably use- 
less as furnishing data for discussion under their several 
heads ; exhorted to harmonize themselves, observe the laws 
of their own being, tune their lives to the music, order and 
harmony of nature’s laws, each save himself then save his 
brother, be a law unto themselves, so when each shall be 
right the whole shall be right, for the whole of society is made 
up of individuals. 

Stephen Foster took this work in hand, and did well for 
a time ; but mounting his favorite hobby, abolition, it carried 
him off so swiftly that he entirely lost sight of the question. 

I was sorry that that other sum of all villainies, intem- 
perance, received no hearty, special. rebuke; the thous- 
and-mouthed pandemonium in Buffalo, even belching forth 
its consuming fires, unceasing, passed unnoticed. Slavery, 
_ by a number of speakers, was pronounced “ the sum of all 
villainies ;” that is right. But the use of tobacco should be 
characterized the sum of all nastiness.— 


THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AN ANTILSLA- 
VERY INSTRUMENT. 


Dec. 2, 1859. 
[From the Liberator.] 


“ The United States shail guarantee to every State in this Union a Re- 
publican form of government.”—ART. 4. Suc. 4. U. 8. ConstTiITUTION. 


From this text, taken from the American political Bible 
for a foundation, I propose some remarks on the standing 
motto at the head of the Liberator. I request their inser- 
tion in its columns, and you are at liberty to subjoin such 
remarks as you may think best. 


66 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


Tam not vain enough to think that Iam about to sug- 
gest a new idea; the same has been said many times in 
numerous forms. 

Edward Bates, of Missouri, one of the Tr7bune’s candi- 
dates for the next Presidency, in a recent political manifesto, 
said, or is made to say by his spokesman, the Sz. Louzs 
Evening News, November 8th, that “the Slave States have 
not Republican forms of government, but are despotisms.”’ 
Still, he has the unaccountable, though fashionable incon- 
sistency, to say that, were he President, he would sign a 
bill for the admission of a Slave State, without hesitation. — 

“ The United States shall guarantee to every State in this 
Union a Republican form of Government.” Have they 
done that ? Far from it. This provision is a dead letter in 
every Slave State. It is evidenced by their slavery forms of 
government. Who or what is to blame? Is it the Consti- 
tution of the United States? Notso. It is the States and 
people themselves who have baffled, thus far, the execution 
and enforcement of this salutary and peremptory provision 
of the work of the fathers. Nay, we have been multiply- 
ing Slave States and slave governments, besides holding 
others in the Union with slave governments, instead of en- 
forcing the guarantee. ‘The Constitution is clear of this 
enormity. 

I need not insult any man’s judgment or common sense 
by saying that a Slave State cannot have a republican form 
of government; that slavery and republicanism are eternal 
antagonisms; that they cannot exist in one community ; 
nor can slave and free labor work together. All know this 
without being told. The strongest, blindest South-sider in 
Boston, in the Bay State, in the United States, dare not risk 
his reputation as aman of sense, and say that any Slave 
State in the Union has a republican. government. Not one! 
So the question need not be argued, only affirmed. If any- 
body dare take the affirmative, let him commence. 

‘Would common law practice which belongs to a repub- 
lican government—courts, juries, sheriffs, jails, or even scaf- 
folds—hold a man in slavery ? Not an hour! It is too slow 
a process. He must be an absolute chattel personal, sub- 
ject to the will of a master, who has, and must have, the 
power of life and death over him. 





U. S. CONSTITUTION AN ANTI-3LAVERY INSTRUMENT. 67 


_ “'The power of the master must be absolute to render the 
submission of the slave perfect. It would not do to allow 
the rights of the master to be brought into discussion in the 
courts of justice. The slave, to remain a slave, must be sen- 
sible there is no appeal from his master.” [2 Devereaua’s 
N. Carolina Rep. 263.| 

“'There is no law for negro slavery but that of the over- 
seer’s whip,” [L. Lupington, 1b. p. 49—Goodell’s Slave 

Code, pages 126, 127,] and I would here commend this 
work to all who are leaning toward the South side of this 
“ubject. It would be apt, if read attentively, to strengthen 

them up. 

- No. There is no law for slavery but brute force. It has 
- been a system of man-stealing, robbery and piracy, from the 
time the notorious John Hawkins commenced it in Africa 
till now. 

If this provision of the Constitution had been applied to 
the system, it would have overthrown it long ago. There 
are other provisions that would help materially, such as the 
equal rights of citizens of a State among all the States, the 
freedom of speech and of the press, &c. 

But had this primal provision been enforced, the chief 
corner-stone of the whole structure, both the fugitive clause 
and the representative clause, which were mere temporary 
contingents, would have been obsolete; for there would be 
no slaves to run away, and none to represent. 

So, friend Garrison, I think you have got the saddle on 
the wrong horse. Ii is not the Constitution of the United 
States that is ‘‘a covenant with death, and an agreement 
with hell,” but American slavery, which the “ States of this 
Union, and the people thereof,” have suffered so long to 
curse and pollutethe land, rendering that instrument a dead- 
letter in the Slave States. No; we, their degenerate chil- 
dren, are to blame, not the fathers ; we have been recreant 
to our trust. They did the best they could, under the cir- 
cumstances ; they did well enough; they furnished the in- 
strument with which to overthrow slavery, and we have 
failed to use it: and why? Simply because the slave power 
has always controlled the government, and shaped legisla- 
tion to protect, extend and perpetuate slavery. ‘The majori- 
ty of the people and their representatives are willing to 


a) 


68 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


have it so; indeed, are aiding and abetting—have laid their 
own sacrilegious hands to it—and are still doing so. The 
whole nation is corrupted by slavery. Neither the fathers 
nor their work are worthy of such reproach. 

“A republican form of government is a government. of 
the people.” |Webster.] Will any man so stultify himself 
as to suppose that a portion of the people of a State can 
hold another portion as chattels, and call that a republican 
government ? And these chattels, forming the chief mate- 
rial power of the State, doing all its labor, when productive 
labor constitutes all private and public wealth and prosper- 
ity; while this laboring and producing class is robbed of the 
last cent of their earnings, which are appropriated by and 
to the non-laboring and non-producing class, who are ren- 
dered by the process helpless and worthless drones, while 
the laboring and producing class have no participation in 
the government, nor protection under it. 

But, says an objector, these are not people. Who says 
that? And by what authority but the law of the stronger, 
by whom they are crushed to the state of the brute ? 

But it is presumed that their pretended owners would not 
deny that themselves are a portion of the people; but they 
are not republicans, under republican governments; they 
are petty despots, under rank despotisms, deprived them- 
selves, by the frame-work of the institution, of the essential 
elements of republicanism—of the freedom of speech and of 
the press—of the power of manumission, if they would. Nor 
will it be denied that the non-slaveholding whites are peo- 
ple; still, by the workings of slavery, they are reduced in 
their condition to nearly a level with the slave; deprived of 
work and wages—as labor is degraded because the work is 
done without wages—shut out from the tree of knowledge, 
the free participation in the fruits of which is indispensable 
to the enjoyment of a republican government; not allowed 
to speak, even, in the presence of slave-owners, only to bow 
assent to what they may say. [See Helper’s Impending 
Crisis.| 

But it is almost superfluous to quote authority, as almost 
every reading and thinking person is now familiar with the 
workings of the institution. The free people of color are no 
better off. 





LETTER TO HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 69 


Nor can it be successfully denied that the slave class is a 
portion of the people. The instrument under review, the 
Constitution itself, declares this, and that is good enough 
authority for me and my purpose, and ought to be for every 
American. ‘They are mentioned twice—in the representa- 
tive clause and in the fugitive clause—and in both instances 
are termed persons, and persons collectively are people— 
are inhabitants of a state or country. [See Webster.| 

What is the peaceable remedy? Why, enforce the Con- 
slitution. Require every State in the Union to adopt a 
republican form of government. As the Free States have 
done, so let the Slave States do—replace their slave gov- 
ernment by a republican form of government. 

_It is no good reason, though many think so, that because 
the Free States have done this in their own time, the Slave 
States should never begin the work. They should be re. 
quired to doit; and now is a good time to commence, while 
our Southern copartners are plotting for a slave code for 
the Territories. ‘The Federal Courts are bound by the Con- 
stitution to entertain all cases of law and equity. Which 
of the northern or free members of the firm will begin ? 
Will Massachusetts, and test the case through the courts ? 

Nor is it a good reason why the South should not be 


coerced should they not voluntarily change their form of 


government, because they have been let alone so long. 
Wrong is never made right by age. C. ROBINSON. 





LETTER TO HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 


March 16, 1860. 


Dear Sir: _ Being one of your immediate constituents, I 
will not waste time in apologizing for addressing you on a 
topic of vital interest, not to the black man of this country 
only, but involving the common constitational liberties of 
the white man as well. 

I belong to the laboring masses. We farmers, mechanics 
and laborers have but little interest in politics and govern- 
ment, only to vote intelligently, and see that the government 
is so administered as to secure our liberties; to protect our 
persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable 


70 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


searches and seizures; our life, liberty and property, the 
freedom of speech, of the press, and of the ballot; to do and 
enjoy all the acts and rights which freemen have, and of 
right ought to have, under the Constitution of the United 
States; for I believe we have no just reason to complain 
of the administration of the State governments of the Free 
States, but very much of the Federal Government, in this 
direction ; and we think we have a right to demand of our 
Federal statesmen better security of constitutional rights. — 
This is all we ask. I speak in general terms for the whole 
American family, for if one member suffers, the whole body 
suffers ; hence, I speak particularly for myself and mine. 

I am old—have been younger—young enough and old 
enough, in 1812, to be a pioneer in Western New York, to 
beat the bush and half beat the British in the second war 
of independence. Our descendants are numerous: three of 
them now in the despotic South, and allowed to remain 
there and prosecute their business only under peculiar force 
of circumstances, which I need not mention here. And here 
we are, closed from each other’s familiar greetings and in- 
terchange, through the medium of letters and periodicals, 
unless blackened with the smut of slavery and varnished 
with Southern dirt; their parents and numerous friends at 
the North estopped from correspondence, or allowed it only 
on condition of a degrading and unconstitutional espionage 
on their part, and at the risk of compromising the safety and 
business of the other parties. 

Thousands are going South, and will go, to seek a more 
genial climate, and a larger field for industry and enterprise. 
Cannot these be protected in their legal and constitutional 
rights, as though they were sojourning in foreign parts ? 
In the latter case, not a hair of their heads dare be touched. 
The least right of an American citizen abroad compromised, 
and the whole army and navy are employed for his protec- 
tion. Is it so with our own citizens at home? 'To the 
shame and disgrace of our pretended free government, No ! 
No Northerner is safe in a Southern State. Iffrom the 
North, that ix enough; he must leave; and if he gets off 
without a coat of tar and feathers, or other indignities and 
violence, he does well. Nor is a Southern citizen safer, if 
he breathes a whisper, or even thinks a thought against this 
gigantic system of human chattelhood. 





LETTER TO HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 71 


I am very familiarly acquainted with two young men, born. . 


in this State, graduates of the same noted seat of learning 
from which Wm. H. Seward took his degrees, who have 

-gone South, one of them not two years ago, to Alabama, 

where he procured a paying situation as teacher, from which 

comfortable position he has been recently ejected, for the 

only reason that he was a Northerner; though, to my cer- 

tain knowledge, he defended the “ peculiar institution ”’ 

bravely. The other has more recently made the trial, and 

writes back to his friends, that ‘“‘Northerners tell me they are 

kept under pretty strict surveillance here.” 

Your speech of February 29, 1860, on the admission of 
Kansas, was a good one; the Tribune and other friends say 
that. But I must be allowed to say that, in my opinion, it 
lacks both completeness and directness. The issue is well 
taken, and the trial of the culprit, slavery, well prosecuted— 
the facts of the aggressions of slavery on freedom well 
stated. But whatis the remedy? ‘That is the question. 
This history is familiar to the humblest, but what are the 
guarantees for the future ? 

There is one count omitted which strikes deeper at the 
root of liberty than any one enumerated. The abridgment 
of liberty of speech and of the press cannot be effected by 
law. Such a law would be void under the Constitution of 
the United States, as would the Sedition Law proposed by 
that ranting demagogue, “ don’t care, dare-devil Douglas.” 
After having a little taste of “Alien and Sedition Law,” the 
fathers anticipated and estopped such petty tyrants by an 
amendment, or rather extension of the guarantees of free- 
dom. (Art, 1, sec. 1, of Amendments.) But by insurrection— 
for I substitute this word for mob violence, which I think 
may be done in this case, and do no violence to the mean- 
ing of terms—I say, by insurrectionary movements of armed 
men, thirteen printing presses have been destroyed during 
the “irrepressible conflict,” ten of them on professedly free 
territory, commencing with Elijah P. Lovejoy’s, at St. Louis, 
Missouri, who lost his life in defense of a free press, the 
third one, at Alton, Illinois, and ending with that of the 
Free South, at Newport, Kentucky, on the 28th of October 
last, conducted by Wm. S. Bailey. The Federal Govern- 
ment is bound by the Constitution to suppress all insurrec- 


(2 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


tions, yet no notice is taken of these ; but in case of an insur- 
rection in behalf of freedom, the Government would prompt- 
ly furnish hangmen and hemp for the offenders. 

The present Governor of Kentucky informed Mr. Fee and 
his forty associates, victims of this insurrectionary violence, 
on their petitioning him for protection, in substance, that 
the government of Kentucky was too weak to protect them 
and their rights against the violence of the mobocrats. Is 
the Federal Government too weak also? No! if it does not 
protect, not only these, but every American, as well at home 
as abroad, it is for want of will. If the States fail to do it, 
why should not the United States extend its protecting 
shield? But if this, too, cannot, or fails to protect or se- 
cure the liberty of its citizens, the Union is a sham, and the 
Constitution is not worth the paper on which it is written— 
fit only to be trodden under foot of men! Are there not mem- 
bers who will propose measures before Congress, and pass 
them, for the better security of the people under the consti- 
tutional guarantees ? Doubtless every member is familiar . 
with the provisions of the organic law. If there be any that 
are not, they are unfit to be there. 

After assuring the perfect freedom which would be ex- 
tended to Southern men incase they saw fit to prosecute a 
political campaign in the Free States for the election of any 
candidates for office, of any party, on any platform they 
might choose to adopt, you proceed to say, “ Extend to us 
the same privileges, and I will engage that you will very 
soon have in the South as many republicans as we have De- 
mocrats at the North ;” and, I add, anti-slavery, instead of 
pro-slavery Republicans. It would be preposterous to sup- 
pose anti-slavery men residing in the Slave States advoca- 
ting the continuance of slavery.in their midst, keeping it 
where it is, as Northern Republicans do. 

But this is not my point. “ Extend to us the same privi- 
leges.”” What privileges? Are not the citizens, both North 
and South, entitled by right to these privileges, under the 
Constitution bestowed by the fathers, without begging 
them from politicians of the North, or a handful of oligarchs 
of the South. Must we depend on the nod of these? Or 
is the operation of these rights to be narrowed down and 
limited north of Mason and Dixon’s line? or to territories 


LETTER TO HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 73 


where are no or next to no inhabitants, and slavery extin- 
guished and freedom established by ambuscade in the 
woods ? 

« The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privi- 
leges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” 
Does this mean nothing? «The freedom of speech or of 
the press shall not be abridged, or the right of the people to 
peaceably assemble, and petition the government for a re- 
dress of grievances.”’ ‘‘ Where the value in controversy shall 
exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shail be 
preserved, and preserved in all criminal cases.’ Are these 

provisions “ glittering generalities ” or realities ? What is a 
government worth that does not protect its citizens? Like 
begets like. We have had insurrections against freedom 
without number, but none of the mobocrats or insurrection- 
ists have been brought to justice, or an attempt made in 
that direction, though the government is bound to suppress 
these, and protect the people from their viclence. How long, 
think you, shall this state of things last, ere an opposing in- 
surrection breaks forth, for the seeurity of rights which the 
government fails to protect, which might grow to revolution, 
and be difficult to overcome, and sweep the disturbing ele- 
ment from the land? Slavery propagandists better not tempt 
that day! Searcely a speech is delivered by Southern mem- 
bers, in either House of Congress, without a sprinkling of 
vehement clamor relative to Southern rights under the Con- 
stitution, mingled with fierce threats of disunion unless they 
are allowed such rights. 

Why should not the Constitution be analyzed in their 
presence, and see how the account stands? Slavery has no 
part nor lot in that instrument; it is not polluted by it. 
The fathers found slavery in all the States but one, and 
under the rule they themselves adopted, that «<The powers 
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor 
prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States 
respectively, or to the people,” (Article X. of Amendments, ) 
slavery, or the right to hold slaves, was never “ delegated 
to the United States,” nor “ prohibited by it.’”’ The fathers 
left it where they found it, in the States, and said to those 
States, When your laborers run away, you may catch them, 
if you can, and no sister State shall let or hinder. And they 
gave them further liberty that they might be represented in 


74 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK, 


Congress, not as chattels, but as “ persons’”—men. Here is 
all there is of slavery in the Constitution of the United 
States, and that is none at all; it is an institution outside of 
that, belonging to the States ; and if the Constitution were 
enforced, would push slavery to the wall, and these two 
provisions would die of their own accord, outside the camp, 
like the leprous person under the Levitieal code, without an 
expunging from the statute books, “ for there would be no 
slaves to run away and none to represent.” 

You say abolition cannot follow from the action of the 
Constitution. Give us protection and free play to speech, 
press and ballot, and we would batter it down while you 
were firing the first platoon of blank cartridges in the ter- 
ritories. Nay, more—‘'The United States shall guarantee 
to every State in this Union a republican form of govern- 
ment.” Give fair play to this untried battering-ram, and 
slavery would be rooted from the American soil, and num- 
bered with the things that were ; for a slave government is a 
despotism, not a republican form of government. 

You say the Republican party will “take up the word 
Union, coupled with Liberty, come what may, in victory as 
in defeat, in power as out of power, now and forever.” This 
sounds. very well indeed on paper. But words, it is said, 
are “ empty things.” What is the fact of Union and Liber- 
ty ? There is none, unless discord and tyranny are union 
and liberty. Slavery is the constant, ever-present, disturb- 
ing element ; the numerous historical facts in the speech 
under review show this. It breeds, and will breed, discord 
and tyranny. There are more union, liberty, and fraterni- 
ty between the British possessions under monarchial gov- 
ernment, stretching along our northern borders, and the 
North, than between the Northern and Southern States of 
this pretended Union. Notwithstanding the immense sacri- 
fice of blood and treasure to wrench ourselves from Eng- 
land, after eighty years’ trial, there is more safety and lib- 
erty to-day, under the British Government, than under our 
own Federal Administration, and all right-minded men and 
women would choose the former to the latter. Will Ameri- 
can statesmen continue this state of things till the General 
Government becomes a hissing and by-word among the na- 
tions, contemptible in the eyes of the American people, and 
our experiment proves a failure 4 





LET SUAVERY DIE. 15 


The President is being put on trial for the alleged cor- 
rupt misapplication of public money. The money of the 
people is of small value, compared to their liberties. In my 
humble opinion, the Executive should extend the protecting 
arm of the Government by proclamation, backed by suitable 
force, as a protection and passport to every citizen of the 
Republic, in his person, house, papers and effects, in his © 
life, liberty and property, to travel and to speak, to write, 
print, and circulate any printed matter; liable for the 
abuse of these privileges, not to lynch law, but only to the 
laws and Constitution of the land; and all branches of the 
government should unite and suppress every unauthorized 
combination of armed men, under whatever pretext. 

Most respectfully yours, C. Rosinson. 


a 


LET SLAVERY DIE. 
Sept. 18, 1860. 
[From the Orleans American. ] 


At the late Republican demonstration at Holley, our es- 
teemed friend Graves, in his usual racy, felicitous style, 
showed up slavery in many of its features of ugliness, but 
concluded at last to let it live. When will speakers, wri- 
ters, leaders, men of mark, learn to say, Let it die. Itis just 
as easily pronounced, and far more logical and consistent. 
Let it die and be buried out of sight of humanity. 

But Northern Republicans say, let it live, the northern 
branch of the Democracy at the North say, let it live or die, 
we don’t care which, and at the South say let it live surely. 
another branch of the Democracy are clamorous for its spread 
and perpetuity. All branches of the Democracy have housed 
the animal snugly in the safe keeping of the Supreme Court, 
there to fatten and thrive. 

Mr. Summer, even, after his masterly lifting of the curtain 
to exhibit slavery as it paints itself in five colors in a ground 
work of bloody red, comes to the painful conclusion to still 
let the barbarous system live. This heroic anti-slavery man 
can hardly yet say, let the beast die. 

Governor Seward is doubtless off the anxious seat, grow- 
ing in grace, in the faith and practice of the irrepressible 
conflict, judging from his recent remarks at Boston. He 


76. FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


says, after assurances of a Republican victory, that ‘‘for the 
first time this banner will be unfurled in safety in many of 
the Slave States. But let not your expectation be confined 
here. I tell you, fellow, citizens, that with this victory 
comes the end of the power of slavery in the United States.” 
I believe it. I believe, too, as he intimates, that the last 
sham-democrat is born in the United States. Yet he seems 
rather too modest to suggest that the end of slavery itself 
will follow of course—is only a question of time. 

Is there any good reason why it should not die, and the 
party that sustains it die withit ? Itis asystem of violence, 
theft, fraud and robbery, and of necessity requires violence, 
theft, fraud and robbery to sustain it. The Democratic, 
pro-slavery President, robs the public treasury for his infam- 
ous Lecompton and other schemes to support slavery. ‘The 
Supreme Court dooms itself to eternal infamy for slavery. 
The Senate consumes its sessions in plotting for slavery. 
The House of Representatives presents a scene of disorgan- 
ized gladiators for slavery. The mails are rifled, post-offi- 
ces plundered for slavery. Kansas is rejected asa Free 
State, and Douglas skulks a vote, for slavery. A homestead 
billis defeated for fear that slavery cannot run rampant over 
the land and blight the soil with the mildew of slavery. A 
Pacific Railroad cannot be built, and other beneficial public 
enterprises projected, we that would favor free labor cannot 
be protected from ruinous foreign competition, for that would 
interfere with slavery. 

But I am asked on all hands, how are you going to kill 
slavery? Let it die; let all the Northremove its broad 
shoulders from under, steady it no longer, but with one ac- 
claim pronounce, Let it die; and with one accord resist to 
the death the setting its dirty feet on another inch of territo- 
ry, and intrust the killing to the South itself. They have 
the materials there to kill it, and will do it, beginning with 
Missouri, so soon as these materials are marshaled in pro- 
per order. 

Here, reader, is my simple, and, as I believe, only practi- 
cal and feasible plan for the abolition of slavery, very brief- 
ly stated. Let every Slave State do as the Free States have 
done—abolish slavery in their own time and way, and be- 
lieve me, there are elements now actively at work to very 
soon accomplish this grand result. 





CONFLICT BETWEEN FREELOM AND SLAVERY. 77 


Slavery has already swung North one and a half degrees 
over free territory. Shall it swing back only to 36 deg. 30 
min., what freedom lost? Nay, that would be childish and 
cowardly. Let its momentum carry freedom to the Gulf 
coast. C. RoBinson. 


~ THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FREEDOM 
AND SLAVERY. 


Dec. 20, 1860. 
{From the Orleans Amevican.] 


Texas was grasped and the United States embroiled with 
Mexico, to spread slavery. The Blue Lodges were formed 
in Northern Missouri, and Kansas invaded for slavery. 
This called into existence the Peoples’—the Republican 
party—expressly to meet the issue of slavery extension ten- 
dered to the country by the slave power, the southern party, 
and to counteract that tendency. 

The people have met the slavery propagandists face to 
face andsignally beaten them at their own game, tendered by 
themselves, not, however, by bullets, their chosen weapons 
of warfare, but by ballots. Now hold them to it. No more 
compromises with slavery—no more slave territory, no back- 

ing down. Hold what you have and get what you cau. 
This is their game, pay them in their own currency. These 
: slaveholders—rule-or-ruin men—a mere moiety of the inhab- 
: itants of the United States,mean to rule the offices—a van- 
quished enemy dictate terms of peace. 

President Buchanan, in his late Message, says that “the 
agitation at the South arises chiefly from the fact that the 
slaves are inspired with vague notions of freedom, hence a 
sense of security no longer exists around the family altar ; 
servile insurrection is apprehended.” No coubt of that. 
He proceeds: ‘“‘ But let us take warning in time, and remove 
the cause of danger.” Is the President sincere? Slavery 
is the cause of danger, nothing else. Remove that and the 
danger is removed, and not till then ; whether in the Union 
or out, the danger will remain and be intensified. Will Mr. 
Buchanan and his partisans help remove the cause of dan- 





78 FATHER ROB3INSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


eer? No. They would not touch the cause, but cherish 
the viper in the bosom of the republic ! 
ONE OF THE PEOPLE. 





A WKEK IN NEW YORK. 


Oct., 1860. 
[From the Herald of Progress. ] 


THe Prince.—< Hush!” say you? <“ Enough of that.” 
Agreed. Full enough in one direction. If any live Amer- 
ican had the least inkling for Royalty, surely, like heat from 
dying embers, it must have all oozed out of him, or else he 
“hasn’t read the papers.’ What quantities of ink have 
been wasted to make the thing ridiculously repulsive ! 

On the day of the advent of the Prince into New York, 
we were stationed—companion, self, and a number of our 
children—at 594 Broadway, in the neighborhood of the 
Metropolitan, provided with a comfortable seat on a tempo- 
rary platform, prepared, gratis, at considerable trouble, by 
the generous occupants, for which we again return them 
our thanks. 

There we sat five mortal hours, gazing at the crowd 
before us, and peering down the street to catch a glimpse of 
the lion of the day. On either side huge piles of brick and 
mortar towered up fifty, yea, one hundred feet, stowed brim 
full of humanity on tiptoe; the street, as far as the eye 
could reach, one surging mass of men, women and children, 
all seeming to let patience have its perfect work. Indeed, 
there never was, I venture to say, a more sober and decor- 
ous crowd together, surrounded, as they were, by those 
haunts of temptation—the liquor dens. 

At length martial airs announced the approach of troops, 
which came up in gailant style, halted and deployed imme- 
diately before us, and there stood, patiently sweltering under 
heavy armor, with the thermometer at 70°, until darkness 
closed the view, and this long before the Prince appeared. 
Hence, neither could we see England’s prospective sover- 
eign, nor he the thousands of already made American sov- ~ 
ereigns—the real lords; this failure, the result of bad man- 
agement in the city authorities, was to many a severe 
disappointment. 


EE eee 


A WEEK IN NEW YORK. : 79 


The military made a fine display, worth sitting some 
time to see; as good, well trained, well equipped and ca- 
parisoned cavalry and infantry (I saw no artillery) as I ever 
saw—perhaps better; and the reader will allow me to be 
something of a judge, having been a soldier in the war of 
1812, and mingled in some of the fierce onsets along the 
Niagara line under Generals Brown, Israel, and Peter B. 
Porter. 

While in waiting for the appearance of the young gentle- 
man, the Prince, I meditated in this wise: Here is a small 
wedge of stone and earth, stuck down into the sea, with a 
spacious bay and harbor, land-locked and sheltered from the 
fierce winds by numerous clustering islands and submarine 
bluffs. Thus slept this little spot in its native grandeur for 


‘untold ages, till its discovery, in 1609, by Hendrick Hudson. 


In 1610, only 250 years ago, a few Dutch ships opened a 
trade with the natives in their wigwams and bark canoes. 
How incredible the change! Who can picture it! 

Behold the avenues, streets, temples, palaces, galleries. 
of art, the museum, with specimens of animals that creep, 
swim, walk and fly; the display of high refinement supplant- 
ing the Indian trail, the hut, ignorance and savagism. 

This human hive, spreading its white wings, gathers sub- 
stance from every shore. And do the rich consider that it 
is work—hard toil—productive industry—that procures it 
all? Not a farthing of capital is produced without labor ; 
nothing is made without it, from a pin to a palace. While 
the rich are lavishing thousands on holiday exhibitions, 
princely receptions, and “ Great Eastern ”’ jubilees, let them 
think of and care for the poor, the down-trodden and the 
weak—those by whom their pride is pampered and their 
coffers filled. 

Other things I thought of during those tedious hours, 
some of which we will postpone to a future number. What: 
a contrast in these ovations of peace, and the “cursed essay 
of arms!” How different the aspect of New York now 
from that presented on the 2d of July, 1776, when General 
Howe and his army took possession of Staten Island, and 
the disastrous battle was fought between the American and 
British forces, on the site where Brooklyn now stands. 

That has passed, and the bond of peace now links the two 


80 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


nations. In some things we emulate our motherland, but in 
others we pray to be excused. We want no lordships and 
tenantry, no entailed estates, no million dollar fee to the 
executive administration, no Church and State coalition, by 
means of which every person is bound by law to support the 
priesthood. Our hypocritical American Church gets along 
by voluntary contributions at the rate of some $30,000,000 
annually, whereas, the people of England are forced to pay 
three times that sum, and more, to support her State reli- 
gion. Without a State religion and landed estates, mon- 
archy is impossible, as a military despotism, like France, is - 
without troops, or slavery without land monopoly. 

Finally, we want no titles of nobility, but just such a con- 
stitutional government as our own, well administered—not 
by a person of chance royalty, but by a citizen elected by 
the magnificent scheme of the ballot, even should we hit on 
a plowman or a radl-splitter. C. Rosinson. 





THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FREEDOM 
AND SLAVERY. 


March 8, 1861. 


[From the Liberator.] 


To His Exce.tutency, Gov. Morgan—Respected Sir: 
Suffer an humble citizen, one of your supporters and con- 
stituents, to address you in relation to your late message, 
generally and especially on the important national subject 
discussed in closing. 

I had been looking with considerable anxiety to see what 
Governor Morgan would say on the revolutionary attitude 
of South Carolina and other Southern States, which, being 
parties in forming the Government, and having its adminis- 
tration in their own hands, are plotting to overthrow it— 
aping the Declaration of Independence with the same pro- 
priety that the King and Parliament of England would 
have done to subvert their own government, and then to 
publish a similar Declaration. 

I was pained, if not mortified, in reading that part of the 
message, recommending the repeal of the dead law, defunct 





CONFLICT BETWEEN FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 81 


twenty years—-to galvanize it into life, then kill it again— 
done only, it seems to me, to appease the wrath of the plan- 
tation bullies, from the fact of their being ejected from power 
in the Federal Government, without requiring them to re- 
spect the rights, lives, liberty and property of citizens of 
New York. It looks to me like a great stretch of conserva- 
tism, if not timidity. Like a petulant boy whipped just 
enough to madden him—then given sugar candy to quiet him ! 

We are constantly told by the papers that Northern citi- 
zens are not safe in a Slave State—those of New York not 
excepted. I hoped to hear from the Governor of the 
“Kmpire State,” backed with an army of 470,000 men, 
something emphatic on this vital question. Are not the 
liberties and lives of our citizens—whose innocent blood, 
shed by brutal violence, and not yet dried on Southern soil, 
is crying for atonement—of as much importance to us, at 
least, as the repeal of an old dead law is to them ? 

I hold that, if we have departed from our constitutional 
obligations, we should return—and they be required to do 
the same. i = * ba 

You say the Union must be preserved. That cannot be, 
with the antagonisms of freedom and slavery. They will 
no longer work together as yoke-fellows. Slavery must now 
go to the wall! 'Then we may have a Union. 

We can run the five-wheeled carriage no longer; there is 
too much wear and tear—the machinery will not work. The 
odd wheel must be removed, or given over to the seceding 
States, whereon to run their negro chariot; and let them 
steady the tottering ark as best they may. 

If, in the operation of natural laws and in the course of 
human events, the time has not fully arrived for the “safe 
deliverance of the woman,” and the birth of universal free- 
dom—wait! But stand erect! 

I suppose when the message speaks of insurrection and 
its suppression, little else was meant but a servile insurrec- 
tion among the slaves, who, by some means, begin to feel 
the native germ of liberty feebly unfolding, which finds a 
lodgment in every human soul, and the love of it springs 
eternal in every human breast; having obtained some vague 


’ notions of freedom, causing en to ha restless, and the fire- 


side of the master insecure. 


82 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


May they not, too, find out that when New York and 
Pennsylvania, with their million men capable of bearing 
arms, with vast munitions, added to the martial force of all 
the States remaining in the Union, areno longer under any 
obligation to interfere to suppress an insurrection, a strike 
for wages and liberty would be much more hopeful, and far 
less perilous, and facilities for escape greatly increased ! 

Most respectfully yours, 
C. Ropinson. 


- P.S. I well remember when, in August, 1814, Governor 
Daniel D. Tompkins sent up his proclamation to Western 
New York, then sparsely settled, for the militia to turn out, 
en masse, and ordered them to Buffalo, which had been burnt 
clean by the enemy the previous winter. We did go, as 
some of us had done before. Many of us volunteered under 
General P. B. Porter, crossed to Fort Erie, joining the few 
surviving regulars there, whipped the British on their own 
ground, which closed the war on “ Niagara’s bloody fron- 
tier.’ . And why the war? A British frigate had fired 
into one of ours, the Chesapeake, and killed a man. ‘The 
outrage being subsequently justified by the British Cabinet, 
was among the chief causes of the war in 1812. Nor was 
Pierce first insulted, tormented, humiliated, and then killed. 
If Georgia refuses to make reparation for brutalities upon 
northern citizens, but justifies these offenders, and refuses to 
surrender them to justice on demand, I would take reprisals, 
and fight her till she would come to terms. 





VEGETABLE AND FRUIT GARDENS. 
April, 1861. 
[From the Herald of Progress.] 


Mr. Epiror: You ask me to make a statement, 1. “ Of 
how much land I have as a garden.” 2. “ How I treat it 
during the different seasons.” 3. “* What I get in fruit and 
vegetables.” 

Yes, Mr. Editor, most cheerfully will I do this. I have 
not the least hesitation in saying, that a mere trifle of land 
may be made to produce fruit and vegetables for all the ta- 


VEGETABLE AND FRUIT GARDENS. 83 


ble necessities of any family, which would be one-half of 
their living, and that, too, by employing only odds and ends 


of time—a niere recreation. 


I have been sorely pained when traveling, and even at 
home, to witness the sad neglect of gardens. We have tra- 
veled quite extensively in eight of the Northern States, both 
the Canadas, and considerably in four of the Southern States, 
and everywhere this almost universal neglect is deplorably 
apparent. 

I amno professional gardener. My life business has been 
farming; gardening being incidental for family use and com- 
fort. At the age of sixty I quit field labor, since which 
time, for eight years, I have done but little except in my 
garden. It contains ninety rods of ground, on which I 
raised, last year, the following amount and variety : 


VEGETABLES. 


Fifty bushels of potatoes ; five hundred cabbages ; three 
hundred heads of lettuce; twenty bushels of onions ; fifty 
bushels of turnips; four bushels of peas; one bushel of 
beans ; one barrel of cucumber pickles ; five bushels of toma- 
toes ; twenty bushels of carrots ; five bushels of beets ; a bed 
of asparagus and sage ; a bed of parsneps and also of ve- 
getable oysters; onion, beet, cabbage, lettuce, parsnep and 
carrot seeds ; two bushels of squashes ; four bushels of sweet 
corn; and four bushels of pop corn. 


FRUIT. 

Six apple trees, just coming into bearing, produced two 
bushels; ten bushels of peaches; seventy-two dwarf pear 
trees, of one year’s growth from setting, and one old stand- 
ard, produced five bushels; ten bushels of plums; seven 
bushels of currants in stem; one bushel of English goose- 
berries; one half bushel of white and black raspberries ; one 
bushel of strawberries ; five bushels of grapes; any quan- 
tity of pie plant; one half bushel of cherries, and one bushel 
of quinces. 

J do no extraordinary thing to the ground, spring or fall ; 
see that it is well fenced, so no animal—man or beast— 
poaches over it; well manured, well plowed or spaded, and 
planted with good seeds at proper times and seasons. [ cul- 
tivate nicely both fruits and vegetables; never let a weed 
go to seed or grow an inch high. 


84. FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


Herein lies the main secret of success. Keep your gar-. 
dens as neat and prim as you would a tobacco yard. We 
have frequently witnessed tobacco and vegetables growing 
in the same inclosure, side by side, the former kept admira- 
bly clean and neat, while the latter were left to struggle for 
dear life among the weeds. Shame on such perversion ! 

Give the ground all the south exposure possible. This is 
a sandy loam, and needs no draining. A compact, stiff soil 
must be under-drained. Save all your wood ashes, droppings 
of cow, horse, pigs, hens, and the night soil; make the most 
of them and apply them in the spring. Put out a hot-bed 
the fore-part of March, in this latitude, for early cabbages, 
tomatoes, etc. Lettuce may be had early by sowing in a 
warm corner, late in the fall or any open spell in winter ; 
cover with coarse brush, and the brush with old mulch, 
straw, stalks or hay, which remove in early spring. 

I raise a crop of Robinson’s early whites—early Junes— 
which are the best early potatoes I ever tried, and follow ~ 
them with English globe turnips, and never fail of a good 
crop of each. ‘The potatoes will come off so as to sow the 
turnips the fore-part of August; I sowed, last summer, 
the 14th of August, and had a fine crop, though the season 
was unusually good for turnips. Sow broadcast, and thin 
out with the hoe to ten or twelve inches. French, or sweet 
turnips, are best for table use, but cannot be matured in this 
way ; the season is too short. SOW these the last half of 
June; transplant or not. 

I grow two crops of cabbage on the same ground, early 
and late. Plant corn or something, after peas; cucumbers 
after early English onions. Spade holes deep in the alleys 
between the beds, saturate the holes with liquid from hog 
or hen manure, plant the seed therein the last of June, and 
by the time the vines begin to run, the onions will be ripe to 
harvest. 

This is just about business enough for an old gent who 
has fought the battle of life, beginning in the “ woods.” I 
make from this little plot $100 yearly, on an average, be- 
sides supplying the table for three or more persons, and a 
good deal towards wintering the cow. I plant strawberries 
among the dwarf pear trees ; the trees are set ten feet apart. 

C. Rosinson. 





LETTER TO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 85 


LETTER TO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 


Jan. 28, 1861. 


DeEaR Sir: Iam astranger to you, but not you to me. 
The display of the forensic powers of Wendell Phillips in 
the interests of Freedom versus Slavery for the last quar- 
ter of a century has made his name and power throughout 
the land as familiar as household words. 

The undersigned was educated in a district school, and 
eraduated at twelve between the plow-handles, consequent- 
ly frank and blunt, so 1 venture to criticise your efforts in 
this department of your universal labors. 

I had the pleasure, recently, to meet and have an inter- 
view with Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton at our county- 
seat, Albion, when I made the same objection to their in- 
strumentality that I now make to you, and they both ac- 
knowledged the force of my position. 

H. R. Helper, in his “ Resurrection of the Dry Bones,” 
the “ Impending Crisis of the South, and How to Meet it,” 
is the only American Abolitionist that,in my opinion, has 
done justice to the subject or approached near to it. In per- 
fecting the steam engine as a propelling power, Fulton 
caught the idea from observing the operation of the English 
artists, Watt, Stephens and others, that two wheels, a dual 
_ force instead of a single one, was needed to overcome the 
| difficulty and make it go. The second wheel was applied 
and it was a success. So I told them what I now tell you, 
that in my opinion you have been laboring all this time with 
one wheel, hence the lack of more speedy and complete 
success. 

Nay, when you portray the miseries, the villainies of the 
system of slavery connected with the black race, less than 
half the story is told. Perhaps Mr. Helper, in picturing the 
degradation of his non-slaveholding white brethren, places 
less stress than truth requires on the condition of the slaves ; 
but here it is ; and when this wheel is placed in the abolition 
machinery, success will be more speedy and certain. All 
men, of every party, acknowledge that slavery operates more 
injuriously, with more crushing weight, on the poor whites 
in the Slave States, than on the blacks ; and what every- 


86 FATHER ROBINSON S SCRAP-BOOK. 

bedy says must be true. Nor does the evil stop here. I 
am an agriculturist, have looked into slavedom, have 
seen the delapidated cotton fields ; reasoning from anal gy, 
and judging from what I have seen, a very short decade 
of years would elapse ere the whole of these delicate. cot- 
ton lands would be denuded of their reproductive forces 
from the blight and tread of slavery. Nothing but the skill, 
enterprise and energy that a system of free labor in parts 
will arrest this destructive tendency. ‘These lands, as | told 
some of the slaveholders, when we were among them in 1858, 
run off faster than their negroes, and no fugitive law can re- 
claim them. Cut up these large farms of from one to two 
thousand acres into ten or twenty, put skillful, industrious 
farmers on each, so grow ten times as much cotton and all 
other crops aS now, make ten times as much manure, hay- 
ing ten times the ey and force to apply it. Kill cff your 
dogs, and introduce sheep instead. Dogs and sheep will not 
flourish well together, whereas wool and cotton husbandry 
together would be a magnificent business. Sheep eal 
return to the land, aside “from other advantages, what the 
cotton absorbed. And when slavery is abolished or the 
system of paid labor introduced, which weuld amount to 
that, large farms, or land monopoly, and dogs, can both be 
dispensed with. 

In your recent speech at Music Hall, Boston, you suggest 
the education of the slave preparatory to freedom. It ap- 
pears to me that on this point all anti-slavery philosophers, 
of whatever school, fail, as on the point above suggested, 
to elaborate or state the true position of the case. In one of 
the most essential departments of knowledge, in that de- 
partment without which the returning, every-day, animal 
wants cannot be supplied, they are already well educated; 
even many of them masters. All of them understand all 
kinds of common labor, and not a few are superior in all in- 
door and out-door work. 

In the winter and spring of 1843 we boarded a runaway 
slave from Kentucky, through the school term, while he at- 
tended our district school near by, for his work between 
school hours; and I venture to say that no white man in 
the State of New York could turn his hand more skillfully to 
any and all kinds of work in the house as housekeeper in all 


> 


LETTER TO HON. PRESTON KING. 87 


its numerous departments, and out-doors in all kinds of farm 
work ; and it is my deliberate opinion that the slave is far 

better prepared to take care of himself than the master, 

from this very reason, if no other, the slave knows how to 

work and the master don’t. 

Doubtless both would feel a mutual dependence to which 
they have been long accustomed were they both left to 
shift for themselves, asincident to a free labor system, but 
the master would fail on the dependence most, would be the 
worse off ; but practice makes perfect ; they would both out- 
grow it in time, and be able both to walk erect under the 
impulse of a new and infinitely better, more exalted man- 
hood. Yours, very respectfully,. C. Rosinson. | 





LETTER TO HON. PRESTON KING. 


Aug. 9, 1864. 


Dear Sir: My letter of July 1st, of which you had the 
goodness to acknowledge the receipt August 5th, contained, 
I think, this sentiment: I hope most devoutly, that at the 
approaching Congress a blow may be struck at the root of 
the rebellion, that through the exigencies of war, slavery 
will be abolished in all the seceded States, all property of 
active traitors confiscated and loyal citizens indemnified, not 
only as to their interest in slaves, but all property. You re- 
ply, “ There is no reason, I think, to apprehend the danger 
you advise against.” That is, if I understand the sentence 
aright, there is no reason for adopting such a policy to put 
down the rebellion. Am I right ? 

_ Well, then, let us apply a brief analysis. Slavery is the 
cause of the revolt. No one of common sense will deny that. 
Mr. Pomroy, of the Senate, in the title to his “ Bill to sup- 
press the Slaveholders’ Rebellion,” has given it the right 
name. Were it not for slavery, there would be no slave- 
holders to institute rebellion, and these traitors have told 
the world plainly what they are at, both in word and deed. 
They are forming a government based on slavery, and who 
does not believe that if they had the power, they would 
destroy freedom, and establish slavery everywhere, both 


North and South. They are striking every desperate blow, 





88 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


both by sea and land, to cripple the Federal Government, to 
subvert the Union, and subjugate the people to their iron 
rule. They would cut all our throats, could they catch us, 
or reduce us to serfs. 

Why not, then, return the compliment—take the issue as 
proffered—strike the most effective blow at once, as they 
would do? Why not remove the cause of disorder, and thus 
relieve the patient? Why treat him so gingerly, handling 
him with gloved fingers, when he ought to be overcome by 
every instrumentality in our power? ‘Take the stinger from 
a wasp and he is harmless. Meet the issue plumply, 
squarely at a venture, then, and risk the consequences. Let 
the people take sides, both North and South, for freedom or 
slavery—for a free government or a slave government—and 
try the momentous issue by the essay of arms, as the slave- 
holding rebels have chosen. 

It is a good opportunity to test the question whether we - 
are to become “ wholly free, or wholly slave.” * * * 

If government and people are waging the war merely to 
kill the rebellion without killing the cause with it, and thus 
relieve ourselves and posterity from this ever-present, dis- 
turbing, mischievous and dangerous element, if that somehow 
is to survive, be let alone, left to live on, we still to be mixed 
up with it—in a word, if the Union is still to be cemented 
by the blood of the slave—* let it slide,” disband your ar- 
mies, and recognize Jeff. Davis’ Slave Confederacy. Better, 
even, the viper be next door neighbor than harbored longer 
in the family. 

Your desired tax law will affect us, personally, but little. 
Our real estate is trifling, and our income is considerably 
less than half of $800, but I have imposed on myself a vol- 
untary tax of $100 to help support the families of volunteers 
—which I shall pay reluctantly for the further prosecution 
of any such worse than aimless war as I have just men- 
tioned. J am too old and infirm now for camp-life and ac- 
tive service, but I can labor some yet at home—pay and 
encourage our heroic young men in a war for universal free- 
dom; but if this grand guiding star is to be shoved into the 
background, I can no longer urge our youth to-mingle their 
young blocd with slave soil, to be still pressed by the tread 
of the slave. Very respectfully, yours, C. Rospinson. 


MAJOR GENERAL FREMONT. 89 


_ FATHER ROBINSON ON THE PRESIDENT’S 
-LETTER. 


[From the Herald of Progress. ] 


“Ts the Government still afraid of offending the South ?” 
I should judge so by reading the dispatch of President Lin- 
coln, modifying Gen. Fremont’s proclamation—in my opin- 
ion a very inopportune step, backward, to say the least of it. 
The people are getting bravely over such fears. They are 
beginning to be in earnest, and determined to put down, not 
only the rebellion, but the cause with it. “Opinion ripens 
as events hasten,” and they are beginning to comprehend 
that the two are indeed one and inseparable. ‘They should 
arouse and demand at once, not only the remedeling of the 
Cabinet—placing Fremont at the head of the War Depart- 
ment—but demanding also that the President issue a simi- 
lar proclamation forthwith, not, however, of that limited 
character, but embracing the whole of Slavedom; and de- 
pend upon it, they will do it ! 

One such step backward disheartens the loyal portion of 
the people more than any Bull Run disaster. One or two 
more such blunders and backslidings by the Government, 
and the people will give up all for lost! 





MAJOR GENERAL FREMONT. 


Sept. 22, 1861. 


j[From the Freeport Journal.] 

Permit a subscriber to say a few words through your col- 
umns, on the war. I think we have a right to speak, hav- 
ing a son and grand-son in the grand army of the west 
The latter entered the service at the first blast of the bugle, 
and has remained at his post, and from him we received re- 
cently a long and very interesting letter dated at “ Bird’s 
Point, Missouri,” and its tone indicates that he is full of the 
brave and dare-devil spirit of the soldier. The son has en- 
tered the gallant first Wisconsin Regiment, Company A, and 
in requesting our consent to enter the service, says, “Surely 
mother would not have her son simply a cowardly looker on 


90 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


while other mothers are sending theirs to battle? It is 
vastly better to hazard life, I hold, than to loose liberty and’ 
see the cause of truth and justice- suffer. Persuasion has 
been exhausted on these Southern tyrants, and force only is 
left, with which to convince them of the wrongs they 
have committed. I feel, therefore, the necessity of enlisting 
in some capacity in the struggle which our country is now 
making to preserve her name and liberties, and with hers, 
the liberties of the civilized world—for I feel that the fate 
of freedom in this conflict will be its fate the world over.” 
Besides, in other days we have ourself mingled in the bed- 
lam of battles for the common defense of our flag and coun- 
try ; and have now imposed a voluntary tax on our little in- 
come, of $150, on the account of, and for the prosecution of 
the war. Have we not a right to speak on the subject? In 
the Journal of September 11th, you say truly, “that the 


effect of the proclamation of the President in answer to that — .— 


of Fremont’s was heart-sickening. ‘There was a rumor, at 
one time, that he had been superseded. Of course it was 
false. The government would not be so supremely foolish 
as to thus cut its own throat. The truth is, Fremont has 
struck the key-note of the whole matter, and the people re- 
cognize it, and are bound to sustain him, Nothing more 
true than this; and while the government at Washington is 
splitting hairs about the late ridiculous law of Congress, 
which offers a bribe to the slave to enter the rebel camps 
and fight against us, as an indirect road to freedom, and ties 
the hands of the Commander-in-Chief and his Generals, Fre- 
mont seems to understand the exigencies of the case, and 
breaks through the “municipal ” fetters by the war power, 
and rises above it all. His proclamation frees most of the 
slaves of Missouri, and as I see, too, by your paper, he is car- 
rying out his well begun purpose by manumission. Let him 
take one more step—make one more forward move, and the 
work for Missouri will be completed, and shea free State. 

I hope to hear another proclamation from Fremont, mus- 
tering all the able-bodied freed slaves into battalion, arming 
and leading them against their worse than savage masters, 
at the same time calling on all the free colored men in all 
the States—in Canada as well—tojoin and swell the liber- 
ating army, help fight the great battle of freedom waged on 


MAJOR GENERAL FREMONT. 91 


their account, thus save many white northern sons, and dis- 
enthrall their kindred and race. Against this measure the 
Government doubtless is still full of false delicacy, but the 
people are getting bravely over it. Let blows like this fall 
thick and fast in Slave States. Why not? While it is dif- 
ficult for us of the Free States to leave home to join the 
army on account of home work, the slaves are left behind, 
what are not taken along for camp service, to do the labor, 
while the masters muster to fight us. That the slaves on 
the plantation are just as much supporting the rebellion as 
the white men in the field, needs no argument to show, and 
without their help the traitors could not hold out a month ; 
indeed, they never could have raised a rebellion ! 

Why not turn their own guns against them, cripple this 
horde of national rascals at once, as they would do by us, 
had they a like advantage—end the war, let the oppressed 
go free, laying a broad and permanent foundation for perpet- 
ual prosperity and peace? I repeat, why not ? 

Messrs. Editors, will you please send a paper containing 
this article to each—our son and grand-son mentioned above, 
both of whom you know without my calling names, and 
their address—with our earnest request that they infuse 
among the officers of the army, among whom I believe they 
both hold rank, as well as among the rank and file, the above 
plan and policy to the utmost of their ability and influence. 

We have more sons, sons-in-law, and grand-sons, we could 
“Jay on the altar of freedom,” but will wait to see whether 
the Government and its Generals will strike this decisive 
blow, take the men already on the ground, as well as those 
more distant, the former of whom, I verily believe, would 
fight with a desperate purpose did they but understand they 
were striking blows for their own freedom. No school 
would be equal to the army, to teach the liberated slave a 
sense of self reliance and self-protection. Put arms in his 
hands, with an assurance of his having the ownership after 
the war, should he act his part well with them, then see if 
the tide of battle would so often turn against you for want 
of force. Assure him, including all colored men, of the same 
pay, rations, bounty, a piece of land off master’s plantation 
which will be forfeited to the Government—for remember, 
reader, the rebel slaveholders pretend to own all the land 


u 


92 _ FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


south, cultivated or not—lI say, assure them equal chances 
with white soldiers, and see then if you would not send dis- 
may among all the rebel ranks and they help you mightily 
to carve the way to speedy victory and peace. Then will 
America have written out and rolled away the history of her 
shame. A glory lies in the lap of coming ages, of which the 
wildest enthusiast has never dreamed. | ©. ROBINSON. 





A PLEA FOR EMANCIPATION. 


Oct. 10, 1861. 


{From the Orleans American. ] 


To His Honor, SECRETARY: SEWARD: Dear Sir—Pro- 
bably the Government does not rest under the delusion that 
the Slaveholders’ Rebellion can be overcome and permanent 
peace established without removing the cause of it, which 
is slavery. The “irrepressible conflict,’ in some form, 
must and will go on ‘till we are wholly free or wholly 
slave.” Doubtless the administration would choose the 
former. Why not, then, strike the blow while you have the 
power to secure it ? It may be answered that the Execu; 
tive convened Congress to get instructions, and feels bound 
by its action. Very well; but the law passed by it on the 
subject ties his hands in that direction, and the question 
now arises—shall he remain tied, at the peril of the coun- 
try ? Under the war power—as we commoners understand 
it, who have to fight the battles—“<the President or the 
~Generals in command ean abolish slavery at any time when, 
in their opinion, the exigencies of the case demand it.” 

Supposing this law of Congress is found to be worse than 
no law. First, because it does circumseribe the action of 
the Government; second, because it offers a bribe to the 
slaves to enter the rebel ranks to fight us, that thereby they 
may become free, thus multiplying enemies. If, then, the 
law is found to be mischievous, exposing the country hourly 
to imminent peril for a hundred days before the Congress 
should again convene—before it could be repealed or modi- 
fied and its defects obviated—what is the duty of the Gov- 
ernment ? To wait, at the extreme risk of having it 





A PLEA FOR EMANCIPATION. 93 


imperiled still more and more, or of being utterly subverted 
even ? or would it not seem to be the duty of the Comman- 
der-in-Chief to take the responsibility—Gen. Jackson or 
Fremont fashion ? * : 

Delays are dangerous. The golden moment might pass, 
perhaps never to return, before the hundred days are up. A 
hundred days! perhaps a portentous hundred days! The 
country trembling in the balance—a remorseless enemy 
tearing at its vitals. Exciting hundred days! Historic 
time! In that interval all may be lost! * * * * 

Mr. Holt fears the result of sudden emancipation—more 
safely done by the force of authority than by brute force. Is 
the South still unconscious of the heaving volcano on which 
they stand ? Assassins and incendiaries in every house- 
hold, a million throats exposed to the knife of the former— 
a thousand cities and towns, three million bales of cotton, 
more or less, inviting the torch of the latter ? 

We are fighting the battles of the colored race in Amer- 
ica, if not of the world. Solely on their account is this war 
waged. I have to ask the Government—why are they still 
left to stand idle spectators, both bond and free, while white 
mothers’ sons are mustered. to the conflict? Why are not 
they required—or invited, at least—to take a chance in the 
fray and help fight their own battles ? 

Why not invite the free colored men, both in the States 
and Canada, to muster into divisions into the service of the 
United States ? Why not free the slaves, gather them by 
conscription into battalions, arm, train and lead them against 
their rebel masters? They are already on the ground, know 
the “lay of the land” better than troops from a distance, 
and would be no less effective when informed they were 
fighting for their own freedom. 

While the rebels are doing the same against us, let them 
know that two can play at that game. Why is it that we 
do not begin to play back, when they are mustering not 
only the blacks, but the redskins against us? Nothing 
would take the starch out of secession like this. Break up 
the nest, destroy the last egg to hatch rebellion and treason. 
No doctor worthy his calling would undertake to cure a 
patient with the fever in him. 

Has not the time of reckoning at length arrived? “ Slowly 


94 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


the hand had crawled along the dial-plate—slowly, as if the 
event would never come; and wrong trod tearful upon 
wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if no ear 
heard its voice, till the measure of the tircle was at length 
fulfilled ; the finger touched the hour, and, as the strokes 
of the great hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant 
the mighty fabric of iniquity was shivered into ruins !” 
Very truly, yours, C. RoBInson. 





LETTER FROM FATHER ROBINSON TO 
THE PRESIDENT. 


Dee. 3, 1861. 


[From the Herald of Progress.] 


ABRAHAM LincoLN—AHonored Sir: I appeal as an hum- 
ble citizen once again to the Government to end this cruel 
war. It has the power under the Constitution, which the 
President, Cabinet, Congress, and Americans generally rev- 
erence so much—the letter, I fear, rather than the spirit. 
As many professed Christians worship the moral bible—the 
form rather than the spirit of it—the “ golden rule,” Justice 
—so many Americans worship the form of the political 
bible, and the slaveholders’ interpretation of it, more than 
its essence—liberty and justice. For these only was it or- 


dained. 'Vhe fathers gave us a free, not a slave Constitution. - 


They “ forbade its recognition of property in man.”’ They 
vave us a Government for freedom, not slavery. * * * 
Had the provisions of the Constitution and its guarantees 


been faithfully enforced—freedom of speech, of the press, a » 


republican form of government for every State in the 
Union—slavery would have long since gone to the wall! 

I challenge the President, I challenge Senator Trumbull 
—who, too, is a Constitution-worshiper—any man, in Con- 
gress or out of it, anywhere to show, by the Constitution 
itself, that the power over any part of slavery was ever 
‘delegated to the United States by the States,” except the 
foreign slave trade, and that the United States disposed of 
by declaring it piracy. All else of slavery was “reserved 
to the States respectively, or to the people,” like all other 


ee 


' 
a. 


‘ 
dl tee Me ie 


a 


LETTER FROM FATHER ROBINSON TO THE PRESIDENT. 95 


undelegated powers. ‘The United States have no business 
with it aside from this—only to remove it when it becomes 
dangerous to public liberty and order—a public nuisance to 
be abated. ‘That time has at length arrived. Its work was 
for freedom, not slavery, to establish—to guarantee a repub- 
lican government to the whole family of States. Neither 
yourself nor predecessors have done it. One of your gen- 
erals (Phelps) is right in this. 

I undertake to say, further, that not only is there no law 
for slavery in the Constitution, but that there is no law 
whatever any where for it but the law of force, and, in the 
nature of things, it can Jive in no other element. * * * 

You are sworn to support the Constitution ; you are con- 
scientious and tenacious. We, the people, have a right to 
require you to enforce its provisions. What if rebel slave- 
holders had the poor privilege of the three-fifths rule—of 
casting three votes where freemen might five—what then ? 
Have they not refused—yea, disdained—to improve even 
that provision, discarding, too, all others? How many 
Congressmen are now from seceded States, under the Con- 
stitution? Take that instrument: what does treason 
consist in underit? Why, “levying war against the United 
States, and giving aid and comfort to its enemies.” Have 
the rebels not doue that? What is the penalty for treason ? 
Death! What rights, then, have they under the Constitu- 
tion—which you are sworn to execute—but to dangle at the 
end of a rope? Let the Constitution interpret itself, and 

not adopt the interpretation of modern slaveholders. It is 
high time. 

Let us have a definite policy from headquarters. Let us 
have the Government on the side of the Constitution—on 
the side of freedom, not slavery—joining hands with Jeff. 
Davis and his rebel crew. We have a right to expect it. 
We, the people, are paying more than a million dollars a 
day for this, thus far, worse than aimless war. Let us cast 
off our folly, and take issue with the traitors. Let it suffice 
for them to fight for slavery, while we fight a few battles for 
freedom. Most of the families all over the loyal States have 
more or less immediate or remote representatives in the Union 
army. We have there a son and three grandsons, at least. 
We claim a right to speak and demand a definite purpose of 


96 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


the Government—the application of the best instrumentali- 
ties for the speedy close of the war. * * * * — 

The great American family are all “ persons,” without 
distinction of color, condition or race; and persons collec- 
tively are people. Our colored population are a portion of 
the people in this government of the people. They were 
born and reared here, and by the bleaching process through 
the slavery mill, many regiments might be mustered into 
the service of the Union, as white as the proudest, high- 
nosed, white aristocrat, North or South. I have looked 
into slavedom, and know what I affirm better than by 
hearsay. ; 

The Government is as much bound to call on this por- 
tion of the people for recruits as any other—as on white 
mothers’ sons; yea, more. This war is waged on their 
account, and they ought to have a large share in it, and 
would have, but for the frowns of the slave power. Strike 
down this chief prop of the rebellion, and in an instant the 
mighty fabric of iniquity will crumble into ruins, and the 
rebellion with it. 

In conclusion, let me say, that while I write, the angelic 
spirit of the Father of his Country whispers in my ear: “It — 
is among my first wishes that some feasible plan may be 
devised whereby slavery might be abolished!” In the 
providence of God, in the progress cf human events, and in 
the operation of natural laws, a practical “plan ”’ for that 
ereat work has been “ devised,”’ prepared at our hands. Will 
the Government employ it, and thus satisfy the “ first wishes”’ 
of the great statesman and hero, lay a foundation for speedy 
and permanent peace, wipe out the history of our shame, 
and enter upon the career of glory that awaits us! 

Very respectfully, your ob’t serv’t, C. RoBINSON. 





THE DOOM OF SLAVERY. 


July 7, 1862. 
{From the Rochester Evening Express.] 


EpDITORS oF THE Express: ‘God has a controversy with 
the people,” for so long oppressing his weaker children. 


THE DOOM OF SLAVERY. Pe POE 


Retributive justice is doing its thorough work.. The door 
of deliverance for the bondmen is set ajar by the finger of 
Omnipotence, nor can mortal arm close it. Ye negro-haters, 
hate on as you will. If the country is saved, it will be 
saved greatly through the instrumentality of the saved— 
the liberated slave. However vulgar it may seem to the 
bloods of aristocracy, the country and they (the contrabands) 
_will walk out at the same open door. We liberalists, whom 
you profess to despise with the same intensity as you do 
the “nigger,” have told you this from the beginning of the 
country’s struggle with treason. ‘“ Establish justice,” and 
rebellion dies. Proclaim liberty through the land, to all the 
inhabitants thereof, and you cut the jugular vein of se- 
cession. 

The rebellion could not last a week without slavery and 
the help of the slaves—could not have been started with- 
out them. ‘They are the base, the root, the element. Now 
don’t play boy in uniform any longer. 

_. A volunteer from this village writes back from Weavers- 
ville, Va., that “the Holley company is gaining glory fast ; 
we are guarding rebel property here while they fight us, 
and it takes two men to guard one hen, and three a cow!” 
(Perhaps this is contraband news. ) : ig * 

Have we not played the fool long enough—paid three 
millions a day long enough—lost precious sons and brothers 
enough—protracted the war long enough—tried to suppress 
the rebellion with one hand, while upholding the cause of it 
with the other, long enough—protected rebel property and 
returned their slaves to them, while they fight us with des- 
perate barbarity, long enough, to begin to do the right thing 
—to cripple the enemy where he lives; to insist that the 
doctors shall not dally with the patient longer, but adminis- 
ter at once the only curative, restorative remedy, before the 
old gentleman, Uncle Samuel, is clean dead ! 

Had we not better postpone further croaking about the 
Constitution, restoring the government as it was, till we 
know whether we have a country to govern ? 

That is my opinion, and I think I have a large majority 
of the voting, fighting and tax- paying people with me. 

C. BR. 


98 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


WHY NOT USE BLACKS AS SOLDIERS? 


July 25, 1862. 
[From the Rochester Express.] 


Eprirors oF TaE Express: All the loyal North have 
been looking for a week past with intense anxiety to know 
what the President would do in relation to the late Confis- 
cation Act and the law of Congress for calling forth the 
militia without reference to color, and now the order of the 
Commander-in-Chief is, to employ the people of African 
descent as “laborers /” That is well; and it appears to 
us that it might, with advantage, have been made sooner, 
if, indeed, the grand Army of the Potomac was doomed to 
dig, instead of fight its way to Richmond. 

But we still inquire why, since the laws referred to em- 
power the President to do so, these are not only allowed as 
laborers, but to meet the perils of the fight—to mount 
pickets for targets for rebel rifles—to bleed and die in a 
thousand horrid forms? Why are they better, their lives more 
precious than native or foreign-born white men—‘ white 
mothers’ sons’? Why are they still treated so tenderly, 
with such shyness ? We spring to respond to the call of 
the government for hundreds of thousands, and still for 
other hundreds of thousands, swelling the number to a mil- 
lion, to go down to mingle in the bedlam and heat of bat- 
tles, and ithe severer heat and malaria of a southern sun— 
to melt away and perish; and they inquire, why are not 
the millions of loyal black men, already on the ground, 
already acclimated, mustered in, as at Port Royal, S. C., 
under Gen. Hunter, to share the perils of this bloody slave- 
holders’ war, waged on their account! Why not made to 
help fight their own battles—their own way to freedom, as 
the slaves of all rebel slaveholders are expressly freed by 
law? Why not proclaimed free !— OF 





THE PRESIDENT’S POLICY. 


Sept. 1, 1862. 
[From the Orleans American. ] 


Messrs. Epirors: Werea number of the members of 
your family sick, you would call a physician. Well, he 


THE PRESIDENT’S POLICY. 99: 


comes, examines the patients, ascertains precisely what. 
their disease is, knows positively the remedy that will cure 
—‘will save.’ He turns to you blandly and says, “TI 
shall not. now administer the sure remedy; wait a little, 
while I doctor the symptoms, watch the pulse, give some 
nostrums that- may check, maybe, part of the cause of de- 
rangement; but when all expletives fail, chills ensue, cold — 
sweats begin, and I find nothing else will do to save the 
patient, I will apply the sovereign remedy.”’~ 

Take another case. Yourself catch a fall, and break both 
arm and leg. You send for a surgeon; he arrives, and says 
to you, “I will relieve you of your great agony by setting 
the broken bones, and thus place you in a condition of 
recovery, when I find I cannot ‘ save’ you without, and not 
before.” Thus taunted and tantalized, what would you 
say! What would you pronounce these pretenders ? 
You would pronounce them quacks, most emphatically and 
most righteously. 

Precisely in this posture stands our family physician, 
Doctor Abraham, and the council of doctors he has drawn 
around him, as is more clearly shown than before, through 
the reply of the Executive to the late plea ae “the mil- 
lions,” of Mr. Horace Greeley. = - 

Our national doctors are trying to save the ae with 
the fever in him. Jeff and his piratical crew are fighting 
for slavery, and we are doing the same. Steadying the 
ark of slavery—will not destroy it, only as a last resort. 
Was there ever quackery practiced on so gigantic a scale, 
and on so costly ? 

But, we ask, why are the loyal, patient people, thus 
tantalized ? When will the Executive see the time to begin 
to strike off shackles, to haul out the under-pinning,” to 
“save the Union ” in the only way it can be saved? How 
long shall the northern hive continue to pour out its swarms 
of men and piles of means to suppress the rebellion, with one 
Bend, while upholding the cause of it with the other ? 

*  * As well reach thy puny fingers to stay 
the ae craters of tna, as to attempt “to save the 
Union with slavery in it. Union should mean justice and 
freedom, for which it was ordained. Liberty and slavery 
are eternal antagonisms, and can never work nor live 
together in harmony. 


100 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


As well undertake to assimilate gunpowder and fire, and 
expect them to keep quiet; and how stupid a man would 
be, after the first experiment and explosion, to attempt to 
gather up the fragments, and try it again, to “save the 
Union as it was!’”’ And this is about the position of Presi- 
dent Lincoln and his cabinet of doctors; and this leads 
me, in concluding, to cite the reader to another immutable 
principle: Like causes produce like results. C. RoBINsoN. 





POLITICAL TEMPERANCE ACTION. 


Oct, 1, 1862. 
{From the State League.] 


With considerable reflection, and a familiar interchange 
of views with the editor of the League, Mr. Carson, I have 
come to the settled conclusion that a new and distinct or- 
ganization for political election on the temperance question 
is absolutely necessary to insure the success of legal temper- 
ance—that neither of the existing parties, Republican or 
Democrat, can be relied upon. ‘The former was, in its in- 
fancy, nearly free from the reprehensible practice of treating 
for votes—of employing liquor and its corrupting influences 
to carry elections; but more recently has entered upon a 
rivalry in this practice with the Democratic faction. 

I will give the reader a parallel, and we want no such 
experiences. ‘The Whig party in its earlier career was 
quite anti-slavery; so much so, that many anti-slavery 
people—Abolitionists, even—thought it might be made an 
instrument for the limitation of the aggressions of slavery 
—of the slave power—and its ultimate overthrow; and how 
woeful was the disappointment, as the sequel has shown. It 
became, too, a rival of the Democratic party in its disgrace- 
ful pandering to slavery ; and not till the destruction of that 
party, and the formation of a purely anti-slavery organiza- 
tion—imade up of the anti-slavery element of the dissolved — 
party, joined by members from the Democratic of like views 
—was there any successful resistance made to the onward 
strides of the slave power, and right speedily and well has 
the Republican party fulfilled its great mission, hastened by 
the help of the conspirators themselves, who, Haman-like, 


INTEMPERANCE AND SLAVERY. 101 


are dangling upon their own high gallows, their pet with 
them—“ two thieves on the cross !”’ 

They lifted the sword to cut the foundations of freedcm, 
and they perish by the sword. Baptized in blocd, while 
the “people” pass out through the red sea. So, as the 
“ Liquor Dealers’ Association” has entered the arena of 
party politics, to wage war upon all the best, the dearest, 
‘most cherished interests of society, let a temperance dispers- 
ary association be immediately formed to meet and beat 
them, and they, too, swing from the scaffold of their erection ! 
Not wait for the action of any existing organization against 
the whisky power, to experience, likewise, delays and ultimate 
disappointment, having to do this same thing of separate or- 
- ganization for successful action at last, and for the one pur- 

pose of sweeping from the State, and finally from the country, 
that other sum of all villainies, intemperance! CR: 





INTEMPERANCE AND SLAVERY. 


Nov., 1862. 
[From the State League.] 


“ Devoted to the interests of temperance and freedom— 
an exterminator of dram-shops and slavery !’’ No publica- 
tion need desire better and more significant mottoes than 
these, to introduce it to the favor and patronage of all well 
wishers of the race. 'These few words, placed at the head 
of the State League, grasp gigantic forces. Slavery and in- 
temperance, our great national and social iniquities, are 
nearer related than second cousins—are twin brothers— 
brother villains, both inwrought with the same spirit of law- 
less violence, trampling under foot all laws, human and di- 
vine, substituting brute force for civil compacts. 

Slaveholders and their allies make great pretensions to 
“Jaw and order,” and clamor lustily for the Constitution, ob- 
servance and enforcement of the laws, and then violate them 
with unscrupulous impunity when standing opposed to the 
spread and perpetuity of their pet institution. Instance the 
overthrow of the Missouri Compact. 

Rumsellers and their dupes do the same thing. ‘There 
never was a law on the statute book in this State, either for 





102 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


license or aura but which they violated and detied 
with unscrupulous impunity. 

Then, again, the slave-owner and his creeping crew howl 
on the track of the Abolitionists, they are the ones that 
brought all this dire calamity and woe upon the country, so 
raise a dust for the old dragon to escape in. So with rum- 
sellers and rum-suckers, it is the fanatics—the prohibition- 
ists who have made all the trouble, as though the liquor 
business was not at the bottom of the whole iniquity. Say 
they, away with your Maine Law! give us a license law! 
and they got it. Nor will they obey any law relative to in- 
toxicating drinks; on this point they are outlaws. 

One more parallel. Slavery is on its last legs—is about 
to die by the accumulating weight of its own inherent wick- 
edness. It has, in its grasping struggles, overdone itself. 
So this combination of mischief—linked tegether under the 
title of the Liquor Dealers’ Association, to pour out more co- 
pious showers of liquid death through all society, will turn 
inwards and consume itself, by the help of God and sober 
men and women. The Democratic party has hitherto been 
_afaithful, patient pack-horse, to convey these two twin devils, 
and steady them in power; but the ailments of Belshazzar 
have entered its joints—it cannot much longer stagger under 
the terrible burden, though there is a great mixture of In- 
dia rubber in that party; but by the weight of these, its 
outside burdens and inside accumulated rottenness, it must 
soon drop to pieces. * * * # 

Having been a soldier of the temperance army from the 
first, and perhaps the first in the State in 1830, through the 
Orleans American, to suggest a prohibitory law, and having 
been an intense observer, as well as fighter, through all the 
long and arduous temperance campaigns against the arch 
enemy, I propose to write for the League a few brief sketches © 
of past experiences and thoughts, wherein I think the cause 
has been impeded, and suggestions of amendments for a fu- 
ture course of operations; and I would repeat right here, 
and in conclusion of this rather wearisome letter, that I 
think the Carson League quite an improvement on all the 
former plans for advancing the cause of temperance, and for 
the final “extermination of the grog-shops !” 


A GOOD MORAL CHARACTER. 1038. 


“A GOOD MORAL CHARACTER.” 


Dec. 15, 1862. 
[From the State League.] 


This stereotyped phrase has been applied to a dram-dealer 
as long as the license system has existed; yet the same 
anomaly, the same contradiction in terms—the perversion 
of terms—exists. ‘This is a condition required in all license 
laws, and, if adhered to, licenses to deal in damnation in 
the drunkard’s drink would never be known. No judge to 
appoint a board; no excise commissioners, no twenty free- 
holders to sign a petition for a person to be licensed, would 
so stultify themselves, if they were doing any other business 
but the business of King Alcohol, as to recommend any 
person as of good moral character, “ who will place the bot- 
tle to his neighbor’s lips,” who will deal in an article the 
effect of which is brimful of immorality—of crimes of every 
grade. No man of good moral character would propose to 
go into such a business. ‘The very proposal shows his rot- 
ten-heartedness, his utter indifference to the good of his 
neighbors, to the moral tone of society, the best interests of 
mankind. Has not the State bolstered up this rottenness 
long enough; indorsed this inconsistency long enough ; 
backed these spoilers by such indorsement too long, by 
lending them a name—officially, too—which they do not 
merit ! Nor can they while in such immoral business. If 
they would live up to the laws made for their guidance, as 
men in all other pursuits do, it might be some mitigation of 
their case; but evidence is piled mountains high that there 
is no set of men—counterfeiters, thieves, burglars, or any 
sort of rascals—who so wantonly, recklessly and contempt- 
uously ‘violate laws relative to their business as the “liquor 
dealers.”” How absurd that State laws should indorse the 
character of such, and thereby force community to stand in 
relation to these moral lepers as good moral characters ! 

One of our best lawyers in Albion (our county-seat) sug- 
gested to the writer, the other day, that. the law would be 
much more effective by giving half the fines to complain- 
ants. In that case, he said, a good many of the more 
inveterate and consequently poorer topers would complain 


3 


104 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


for violations, to obtain means with which to buy more 
liquor—thus making the drunkard-factory run itself. That 
is a good thought. And I propose to repeal all laws, cus- 
toms, transactions and usages that indorse a rumseller as a 
person of “ good moral character,” so as never more to re- 
peat that stupendous lie! 





LETTER TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR. 
Dee., 1362. 

Dear Sir: Being one of your constituents, I take the 
liberty to address you—perhaps more familiarly than other- 
wise would seem proper. Let me say, then, that I think 
you are acting quite wide of the duties of an already elected 
chief magistrate of the State, in circulating about in differ- 
ent places and delivering harangues to the people. You 
were not elected for that object. It is reported that Presi- 
dent Lincoln called your attention recently to this subject, 
by way of a reminder that your duties to the country 
demand and ought to receive support in preference to party. 
Whether the President said it or not, this is my view of 
the case. | 

Nor have you an honest right, even if this speech-making 
is a proper business, for a chosen Governor to speak of the 
result of the election which placed him there—as you did at 
Rome, on the 15th of November. On that occasion you 
are reported to have said: ‘‘ Where the people have been 
called upon to vote they have come up calmly, quietly, but 
resolutely, and have réestablished and re-affirmed the Con- 
stitution ofthe United States. My friends, you rejoice 
because those results have secured the sacredness of your 
homes, the sanctity of your persons, and of all those great 
rights which are embalmed in the Constitution.” Re-estab- 
lished and re-afirmed ! Who is, or what class of citizens 
is aimed at here as subverting the Constitution ? And, on 
the otherhand, who of these ‘“ my friends,”’ as you term them, 
are conservators of that instrument for which there is so 
much professed reverence ? We will offer a specimen or 
two, and see whether the class of persons, your friends, 
whom you very faithfully represent, would be more likely 


| 
: 
. 
: 
: 
| 





_ LETTER TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR. 105 


to preserve and observe the Constitution, the laws, and per- 
petuate constitutional national liberty, than the other large 
class of citizens, although their elected Governor, but whom, 
nevertheless, you do not represent. 

In the police book exhibit, as published in the New York 
Tribune of November 22d, in 39 election districts in that 
city, wherein there were 2,743 groggeries, 279 notorious 
brothels, 1770 places whereto thieves and ruffians habitually 
resort, 105 policy shops, with gambling dens and dance 
houses to match, and among these Front Street and Five 
Pointer class, Wadsworth received 1,681 votes, Seymour, 
12,664—10,983 majority—more than your entire majority 
in the State. This looks to me a rather scaly material 
wherewith to establish a broken-down constitutional gov- 
ernment, or to perpetuate one already established. How 
does it appear to you? Intelligence and virtue, it was said 
by the old apostle of democracy, is the only sure foundation 
for representative governments. Does this look like true 
democracy ? The elective franchise is the head of our un- 
equaled and unparalleled government, as you term it. Now, 
if the head becomes so corrupt and rotten, how long will the 
body endure ? 

It may be replied that the party you represent are not all 
like this tit-bit. Very well; we admit it. You are sup- 
ported by a good many respectable people—nevertheless, it 
looks suspicious. It is most truly said that a man is known 
by the company he keeps; so with a body of men. 

Sir, let me say to you, that you are supported, as ever, 
by the temperance veto, more than half a decade of years 
ago, by the same class of people—foreigners—who love 
liquor as their mothers’ milk, consequently join the Whisky 
Democracy—liquor-sellers and liquor-drinkers, and the rum 
influence generally, and you are indebted to that influence 
for the triumph of the party you represent, more than to 
any other one instrumentality. Money, slavery and whisky 
form the political trinity of sham Democracy—the latter 
the strongest of the three. 


106 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


GOV. SEYMOUR AND THE DEMOCRACY. 
Jan. 10, 1863. 
[From the Orleans American.) 


Messrs. Epvirors: Your cotemporary across the way is 
rather disturbed about the “torrent of abuse of Mr. C. 
Robinson on Gov. Seymour and the Democracy,” and jogs 
the American for its slight indorsement of the recent letter 
of said Robinson to the Governor elect. Now I crave a 
few squares in the American for a familiar talk with friend 
Beach, as a public Democratic journalist, about this matter. 

* * * [Po you deny that “ money, slavery and whisky 
is the political trinity of sham Democracy—the latter the 
strongest’? Then take my arm and go with me the rounds 
of the thirty or forty whisky-stalis in Albion, many of them, 
like as not, in a hole in the ground. Open the door, be 
brave now; you may at first be saluted with mixed odors, 
such as one might expect to encounter on entering a burrow 
of pole-cats. Never mind, proceed, and what do you find 
in these dens? Who are those loafers, idlers, rowdies, 
tavern-haunters, beer-guzzlers, whisky-suckers, cigar-puff- 
ers, vermilion-nosed walking pickles? Are they anybody 
but Democrats? And who are standing behind the bar, 


dealing out the double-distilled damnation? Are they not — 


good Democrats, too? If anybody else has stumbled in 
there, unless by mere accident or on urgent business, let 
him stay ; he has found his company, his level, his feather ! 
Yes, sir, these are all, or chiefly, Democrats, native or for- 
eign, and will vote every time, and no mistake, the good 
Democratic ticket. And mind you this, an examination 
will hold good through the State, clean down to the Five 
Point grog-shops and brothels, where Seymour “ saved his 
bacon,” turned the State, which had sent down there twenty- 
two thousand Republican majority, eleven hundred of it 
from this county, to be overcome by gamblers, blacklegs, 
drunkards, thieves and robbers, and was so overcome, to 
enable Governor Seymour officially to spread himself, and 
pitch into the Administration and its policy—into his own 
Government—and give aid and comfort to Jeff. Davis and 
his traitorous crew. Is anybody disappointed? His ante- 
cedents show he would do just this. 


Saal he ale ith 
Pe a 


GOVERNOR SEYMOUR AND THE DEMOCRACY. 107 


In his Message, ‘“‘ Constitution’ is repeated forty times, 
while the word “ Institution ’”’ once expressed would have 
explained all that is meant by it in the sense he uses it. * * * 

On the third Tuesday of May, 1846, the people of the 
State, excepting New York city, voted by towns and wards 
on the question of license, or no license. Every town in 
this county voted no, except Clarendon, which gave fifteen 
majority for license. Majority in the county, 1108; very 
near the figure of its last vote against Seymour. Your own 
town of Barre gave 309 of it, and the State gave a majority 
of 65,799 against license. Taking courage from this very 
popular vote, temperance men, with the veteran Edwin C. 
Delevan in the van, who expended for the cause what would 
be considered a fortune for any common man, from that 
time forward went in, and labored incessantly for a prohibi- 
tory law, so as to stay, if possible, the tide of death and de- 
struction that was sweeping through the land by the liquor 
traffic, and after eight years of incessant labor, succeeded ; 
and what followed? Horatio Seymour, then Governor, ve- 
toed the bill / thus undoing the great work, and extinguish- 
ing, at a stroke of the pen, the last glimmering hope of the 
fifty thousand drunkards’ wives in the State—worse than 
widowed mothers, “sitting in the valley and shadow of 
death!’ Why should not rum-sellers and rum-suckers 
trustand supporthim? ‘Horatio Seymour was unanimous- 
ly indorsed for Governor, and D. R. Floyd Jones for Lieu- 
tenant-Governor.” Thus reads the report of the proceed- 
ings of the “ Liquor Dealers’ State Convention,” held at 
Syracuse on 30th of September last. 





Jan. 20, 1863. 


[From the Orleans American. ] 


Mr. Eprror: ‘The following low squib appeared in the 
Union and Advertiser about the time of the Orleans Repub- 
lican’s on C. R., for heaping such “ torrents of abuse on Gov. 
Seymour and the Democracy.” You kindly surrendered a 

space in the American for a chat with friend Beach, and 
~ now I wish, through the same medium, to pay my compli- 
ments to Butts, of the Rochester paper : 


103 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


“TALKING To Gov. Seymour.—A man, wno signs himself C. Robinson, 
and hails from Holley, has addressed a long letter to Gov. Ssymour, 
through the Republican organ at Albion, in which he tells the Gover- 
nor waat he should and what he shouldnotdo. He (Robinson) thinks 
the Governor has no right to mike speeches. If the Governor should 
hear that he would never speak again. Robinson didn’t exactly say it, 
but no doubt believes that the Abolition party ought to have run him 
for Governor instead of Wadsworth. It is lucky for Seymour and the 
rest of the white people that the mistake was made.” 


I do not profess to be very flippant in irony, but had rather 
deal in solid facts. I believe that ours is a government of 
the people, and its officers their servants, and that the hum- 
blest citizen may address the highest functionary by word 
or letter as though he held no office, and was but a private 
individual like one’s self, and with the courtesy due to and 
graduated by merit or demerit. Believing in this principle 
of freedom, I have ventured to address quite a number of 
letters, during the war, to different government agents—to 
Gov. Seward more than any other. 

I am no prophet or prophet’s son, but I have been looking 
steadily for years at the inevitable tendency of things—at 
the laws of correspondences and compensation—the laws of 
cause and eifect—namely : that freedom and slavery were 
working out each its own results, side by side; the one civ- 
ilization and progress, the other sensuality, barbarism and 


decay ; that the two are eternal antagonists; the one natu- — 


rally expansive, the other aggressive by violence; that work 
and wages is the true, natural relation between labor and 
capital, and slavery a forced relation; that “the laborer is 
worthy of his hire ;” and that the country was irresistibly 
drifting to the conclusion that slavery must perish peaceably 
by paying wages for labor done, or go out in blood. | 

I saw, as everybody did, that the slave power consisted 
not in the handful of a quarter of a million slaveholding 
oligarchs, with their slaves and’ “ white trash,” even could 
they all be combined on their side, but likewise of a large 
force at the North; and the Democratic party, being part 
and parcel of the slave power, was most naturally relied 
upon in their treasonable designs of subverting a govern- 
ment they could no longer control, and the architects of 
ruin were not disappointed. The Democracy have proved 
true to their instincts. Why should they not? They are 
battling for their own adopted bantling. They have done 


sh lS Se ee ee 


GOVERNOR SEYMOUR AND THE DEMOCRACY. 109 


more than “hold the garments ” of the oppressor. “ Giving 
consent’”’ in time of peace, they have helped carry their 
bastard bantling into Texas, New Mexico, made attempts 
on California, and lastly on Kansas, and that culminated in 
war—not exactly a slaveholders’, as has often been stated, 
but a war of the slave power North and South—a war of 
the Democracy, so-called—the rule-or-ruin party North and 
South—the latter in arms against the Government, the for- 
mer embarrassing its movements in the*‘ life and death 
struggle.” 

Let me now return more particularly to the subject of 
talking to Gov. Seymour and other Governors. On the 12th 
of February, 1861, I wrote private letters to Hon. Preston 
H, King and Gov. Seward, predicting precisely what has 
occurred: that, in case of war with the slave power, the 
Democracy of the North would act with the slaveholders in 
war as they had in peace, thus measurably neutralizing the 
strength of the Free States. | Is not this true? Have they 
not divided, and are they not still dividing the North, giv- 
ing aid and comfort, by word and action, to their brother 
traitors in arms ? And now, when the rebels are pushed tothe 
desperate straits, as disclosed by their intercepted dispatches 
to Mason and Slidell—of inducing immediate foreign inter- 
vention, or a division of the loyal States, or of losing the 
Confederacy—with what a will their northern sympathizers 
accept and act upon this new, desperate and treasonable 
scheme. : 

The laws of life and health can no more be violated with 
impunity by a people than by an individual; hence, what- 
soever a man or a nation soweth, that shall they also reap. 
«Tf they sow to the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind.” 
No individual or nation can be cured of a disturbance or 
disease without removing the cause ; hence, I had a plan of 
a remedy for rebellion of my own, and, without claiming the 
least merit, in any direction, of exerting any weight, never- 
theless, I pressed the plan upon the attention of Governor 
Morgan, Mr. Greeley, Secretaries Seward, Cameron, Stan- 
ton, and Congressmen Sumner, Trumbull, Preston King, 
Salisbury, Davis, Owen Lovejoy, Burt Van Horn, and 
President Lincoln. It was to knock out the under-pinning, 
strike at the root of the rebellion, cripple the enemy where 


& 


110 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


it will hurt him worst, where weakest—free the slaves, mus- 
ter all you can reach of the free colored in the States or 
Canada into the service of the Union, take in the freedmen 
by conscription, arm, train, and turn them against their 
rebel masters ; they were on the ground, inured to toil and 
hardships, acclimated, costing less to enlist, muster, pay, 
feed, and clothe them ; let them fight their way to freedom 
while the “ army and navy” should see to it that they had 
fair play; thus save the lives of hundreds of thousands of 
precious white mothers’ sons. And now, after two years 
fighting and sacrifice—in the meantime the rebellion has 
been more thoroughly organized, both at home and in Eu- 
rope—we are just entering upon the scheme. 

A few words more in conclusion, to the Unzon, and to the 
Seymour democracy of the State. The Unzon is quite a 
neat looking paper, appears well outside, but within is “ full 
of dead men’s bones ;” for Seymour was dug up from the ~ 
political mummy-pits of the dead past, having run on the 
rum issue in 1854, the year of his famous veto of the pro- 
hibitory law, and was defeated, after a most desperate can- 
vass by the Whig and Temperance candidate, Myron H. 
Clark; but now has been elected on the strength of money, 
slavery andrum. Many of his supporters are justly ranked 
with the ‘Tories of the Revolution, and the Hartford Con- 
ventionists of 1812; more reprehensible than the former, 
for they had some excuse—had a tolerable government al 
ready under the king—the struggle for a better was an ex- 
periment, whereas these have the better one already estab- 
lished. This they are now ready to overthrow, many of 
them ignorantly, I hope. For do you not know that we are 
all aboard the same ship, and if she founders, your chances 
may be no better than ours? Let me close by repeating 
what I said to a group of democrats here, on the breaking 
out of the war: ‘ Let the love of party be swallowed up 
and forgotten by the love of country.” C. RoBINSON. 





THE SHAM DEMOCRACY. 111 


THE SHAM DEMOCRACY. 
Jan. 30, 1863. 


[From the Orleans American.] 


In my last it was placed in its true position as part and 
parcel of the slave power of the nation; co-operators and 
workers, North as well as South—non-slaveholding demo- 
crats, everywhere, who still adhere to the party, as well as 
slaveholders—the rule-or-ruin party, who, not able longer to 
- control the government, attempt by force and arms to sub- 
vert it. I showed that before the war of the slave power 
broke out into open hostilities, the democracy of the South 
could accomplish but little toward extending and perpetua- 
ting slavery, without the aid and comfort of its Northern al 
lies ; that in this way, by this strength and support, they 
clutched 'Texas, New Mexico, and it might be added Florida, 
grabbed at California and Kansas—which last attempt cul- 
minated in civil war; and that the Northern wing of the de- 
mocracy adhere to the Southern portion of the party, now, 
in a state of war, the same as before, giving aid and com- 
fort. 

I now propose to descend more to detail in that memor- 
able, never to be forgotten struggle between Border Ruffian 
Democracy and the Free State men, and the final signal 
triumph of the latter, and show the hand-writing on the wall, 
slavery weighed in the balances of eternal justice and found 
wanting ; show that then and there it made its last fatal 
grasp on free soil on this continent—the beginning of the 

end of slavery, in blood! A child may hold two apples i fy its 
hand, but letting go to grasp more, itloses all. * * 

God be praised / they could not fasten the hideous mon- 
ster, the sum and essence of all villainy, on the virgin soil 
of Kansas. The little handful of Free State men, nerved 
by the eternal principles of justice, stood steady and unwa- 
vering, as the needle to the pole, and came out of the 
conflict of fearful odds triumphant, though Douglas declar- 
ed, “ we will subdue you !” yet there she stands, in her morn- 
ing glory, a beacon to those engaged on a more extended 
scale ; and who will falter now, with that bright example 
before them? Battling, and finally successful, against the 


112 FATHER ROBINSON'S SCRAP-BOOK. 


whole power of the Federal Government, and now all this 
is reversed, the weight of the government is for freedom to 
all ! 

Let every Union and Liberty loving man and woman 
buckle on the armor anew, talk, write, vote, and fight for 
final victory ! The enemy is struggling in the ‘“ last ditch,” . 
from which he never will recover, but will sink to ultimate 
infamy and disgrace ! 

Modern Democracy has proved false to true Democracy— 
false to liberty, humanity and justice—false to our country, 
now in her extreme peril, and false to God! true only to 
“ our party,” to border-ruffian-fillibustering copperhead De- | 
mocracy or rather demont-ocracy, or mob-ocracy. | 

‘God has stood by us in six troubles; norin the seventh 
will he forsake us.”’ So. then let us press on to final 
triumph. C. ROBINSON. 


A DEMOCRATIC VICTORY. 


March 10, 1863. 
[From the Orleans American.] 


Mr. Eviror: I wish to have announced through your 
columns our splendid Red Corn, Democratic victory at the 
Corporation Election, on Tuesday, 3d March wst., at Hol- 
ley—jifty-five majority among a voting population of about 
two hundred. 

The election was not contested by the Black Republicans, 
and so we Whisky Democrats had it all our own way ; 
hence the victory as above. Notwithstanding we had one 
temperance man, and one church member (Presbyterian) on 
the ticket for Trustees, still, having the biggest rum-seller 
in town at the head of the ticket, enough to pickle it and se- 
cure the votes of the suckers, domestic and foreign, we car- 
ried the election high and dry ! (save the mark, not very dry, 
however high /) by the above crushing majority. All the rest 
of the ticket were natural copperheads. 

A VOTER. 


REBELLION THE OFFSPRING OF SLAVERY. 1138 


REBEI LION THE OFFSPRING OF SLA- 
VERY AND THE “DEMOCRACY.” 


Feb. 21. 1863. 


[From the Orleans American. ] 


John C. Calhoun, that arch-disturber, was its godfather. 
He found himself once mistaken. The tariff, he said, (after 
trying it,) was not the right basis to operate upon for the 
dismemberment of the Union. Slavery was the platform 
on which the South would be united and the North divided 
—the Democratic, the party to be relied upon to aid the 
South when the time should come for separation of the Free 
and Slave States. And his foresight was prophetic, for in 
relation to the Democratic party, had he been writing his- 
tory, he could not have hit the mark better. * * * 

The two wings of the party—or three, whichever you 
will—have most lovingly embraced each other, and are now 
plotting a way to use the slave still more—to employ him 
for political capital a little longer—to make a little more 
out of him. 

This breach in the copperhead party—wzot the abolition- 
ists—was the immediate cause of the war. But more distant 
and deeper down lies the true cause of the eruption. It had 
a remoter cause, and now sce the effect. Its seed has lain 
in the organic structure of the Government from its begin- 
ning, and has been festering in its vital forces till it has 
broken out, ripened into revolution, and consequently liberty 
and slavery cannot longer work together on this continent 
—one or the other, in this death struggle, must go under. 
This is not a war for the “xigger,’’ to free him, but his 
freedom is so interwoven with the salvation of the Govern- 
ment that it cannot be saved without; nor can the free- 
dom of white men be preserved without—involving not only 
liberty here, but the liberties of the struggling millions 
everywhere. This is a war of the slave power of the 
Republic on the free labor power of the Republic; the one 
has the other by the throat—shall the latter be strangled ? 
Nay, nay !—no, never! The former must be swept from 
the continent. It is making a terrible dying struggle. The 
Southern branch battling in front, and the copperhead allies 
hissing in the rear! 


114 ; FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK, 


THE SLAVE DEMOCRACY MAKING ITS 
OWN HISTORY. 


Feb. 25, 1863. 


[From the Orleans American. ] 


And I suppose, Mr. Editor, any person may write it, past 
or present, and predict its future. I have done something 
at both, and now attempt more. They prate always lustily 
for the Constitution, and violate it recklessly with the same 
breath. Freedom of speech and of the press never did and 
never can exist where. slavery does. Fourteen printing 
presses have been destroyed by slaveocratic mobs, beginning 
with Elijah P. Lovejoy’s in the fall of 1837, all in the inter- 
est of slavery, and against the freedom guaranteed by the 
Constitution. Lovejoy was a martyr to the same interest. 
Scourgings, lynchings, torturings, murderings, theft and 
robbery have marked its history, both of black slaves and 
white freemen, from the North as well as South. Citizens | 
from New York in particular, for being such, (no other 
offense,) who happened to be caught in slavedom, more es- 
pecially in cottondom—particularly in Georgia—have been 
thus outraged, and these outrages were committed before 
the present war was levied. Slavery is a perpetual war on 
all human rights; the worst state of things exists always 
under its iron sway, and less security than under an arbi- 
trary government; for then the subject would know by some 
fixed rule what he could and what he could not do, speak 
and write. But under this slave oligarchy the citizen is 
subject at all times and at any moment to the whim and 
caprice of an infuriated mob. 'These isolated mobs have at 
length combined in an organized form, and taken to itself 
the name of a government, for the overthrow of constilu- 
tional liberty. : 

I say all these bloody barbarisms, and much more, have 
been committed in the interest of slavery by the “ Democ- 
racy.” But it is a long road that has no turn—a wind that 
never shifts. ‘Tension may be wrought to too high a point 
to hold. Look out, then, for a recoil. Sow to the wind, 
and you are sure to reap the whirlwind. Violence will, 
ooner or later, “return to plague the inventors.” ‘The tide 
s turning at last. Forbearance has ceased to be a virtue. 


SLAVE DEMOCRACY MAKING ITS OWN HISTORY. 115 


* * * QOur family is numerously represented in the 
Union army and navy. Still they go. One little fellow, 
scarcely five feet high, nor 18 years of age, took it into his 
young head a few weeks ago that he must enlist, and did 
enlist, two weeks since, under Capt. Gardner, of Byron, N. 
Y. Before enlisting, he was asked by a member of the fam- 
ily what he wanted to enlist for. The prompt reply was, 
_“T want to shoot a rebel!” We could do that handily 
without going to Dixie. = ~ * 

I have known churches closed by Democratic, negro- 
hating trustees, against meetings intended for appeals to 
the benevolence of the people for God’s suffering poor, who 
had “fallen amongst thieves,” and worked for nothing all 
their weary years, and now, just emerging from their long 
night of bondage, without a penny in their pocket, a mouth- 
ful to eat, and hardly clothing to cover their nakedness. 
And these trustees were church members. Such a case oc- 
curred in this village. ‘The meeting was appointed for the 
18th Feb. inst., and had to be held at the old stone school- 
house; and notwithstanding there was a good deal of negro- 
hating rowdyism manifested both inside and outside the 
house, Mr. Coon and his dark associate acquitted themselves 
well. 

This colored man, Charlie Walker, as he claimed his 
name to be, made quite a favorable impression, even among 
some of the copperheads—as though he really belonged to 
the humans. Being one of the first of the contrabands lib- 
erated by Gen. Butler, consequently only about two years 
out of chatteldom, he has become quite a power. I am told 
by all the committees who have been gathering up cast-off 
clothing, books, money, &c., for the “contrabands,” with 
scarce an exception, no Democrat contributed, but almost 
invariably refused to do so; notwithstanding, a large pile 
of clothing and some money have been gathered up in this 
town and vicinity. Take another and closing specimen of 
the spirit of pro-slavery Democracy : 

The people of Kansas, after fighting their way to freedom, 
in spite of the efforts of two Democratic administrations to 
the contrary, were smitten with famine, and would have 
been left to starve and die for all the Democrats would do 
for them. How they looked daggers, pouted at them, and 


116 _ FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


mocked at their calamity, all because freedom triumphed 
there instead of slavery. This is its spirit, and Democracy 
has thoroughly and hopelessly imbibed it. . 

But when slavery dieth, slave Democracy will die with 
it; and the day of their dissolution draweth near. Let the 
loving twain be buried away in the pit of everlasting infamy 
they themselves have dug. Then let the nations shout and. 
sing hosannahs, sayinge—“‘ Glory to God in the highest! 
On earth, peace and good will to men!” C. Rosinson. 





ARGUMENT vs. SCURRILITY. 


Mr. Epiror: The Orleans Republican, of 18th March, 
inst., contains a low, scurrilous diatribe against “C. Robin- 
son,” dated “ Bergen,” and signed, “ Inquirer.” Now, if 
anybody wants to say anything to me through the press, or 
about me, concerning the great question of Freedom versus 
Slavery, which two systems are now agitating the country 
with desolating civil war, let him come out like a man, if he 
has any manhood, in his own proper name, and support and — 
defend the system of human chattelhood as best he can. 
This is the question in hand now. _C. RoBinson, — 





LETTER TO THURLOW WEED. 
March 21, 1862. 


[From the State League.] 


‘Our Government and Union, if dependent on party, will surely 
perish !”—THURLOW WEED 10 HoRACE GREELEY. 

Mr. Weepv—Derar Sir: You have read, written and 
studied much, for you have been at it, it must be, a long life- 
time now. When I saw you during the “ Morgan and Ma- 
son excitement,’’ I judged you to be about my age, and I 
am now over three score and ten. But when you, with all 
this long experience, penned the above sentence, you would 
have spoken less confidently had you had an eye to the re- 
cords of the past. The Revolution was “dependent” on 
the Whig Party, and it succeeded in spite of the powerful 
Tory ard Cow-boy Party. Nor did the “ Government and 


LETTER TO THURLOW WEED. 117 


-Union perish ” in the struggle for maritime and commercial 
rights of 1812. The Jeffersonian, not the Calhoun Demo- 
-eracy, carried the country safely and triumphantly through 
that crisis, in the face of all the treasonable discourage- 
ments by the Hartford Convention Blue Light Federal- 
ists. 

So in our present struggle. May not a doubt be enter- 
tained of the correctness of your positions, notwithstanding 
the influence of the pro-slavery party, the ranks of which 
you have finally snugly entered, and to which you have 
long been gravitating ; the party which is so intensely fight- 
ing the administration of Mr. Lincoln, and giving its moral 
and political, if not material and martial weight, to that of 
Jefferson Davis—contending precisely for the same thing as 
the latter, the life of slavery, which is the life of the rebel- 
lion ; in the Union if they can, out of it if they must ? 

Here, Mr. Weed, is exactly where your party stands: 
yourself at any rate. You advocate the Crittenden Com- 
promise, that would secure slavery, the arch-disturber, in the 

«Union. You are there yet, as 1 understand it, and more. 
With all your professions of union in the letter to Mr. Gree- 
ley, of which the heading of this is an extract, it is easy 
enough seen that you distrust the ability of the administra- 
tion, with all the extraordinary powers conferred upon it by 
Congress, to quell the rebellion. 

Yes, sir, you might as well say squarely what you did 
covertly, that the people ought to resist the operations of 
the government, sneering at the idea of negro troops, &c. ; 
for, Mr. Weed, you are wise enough to know that opposition 
to the Administration is. opposition to the Government. 

Now I repeat with all the opposing forces, the noxious 
Weeds, gone to seed, palmetto ratile-snakes, or copperheads, 
or treason, bold or lurking, the “Government and Union” 
may be saved, not “surely perish,” though the struggle 
may be fearfully prolonged by these factions and opposing 
forces, as: was doubtless the case in the two former examples 
from like causes. May there not be some hope of it, even 
should Thurlow and Horace continue their persistent and 
not very loving family feuds ? 

If yourself and new-found partisans want to help save the 
Government, Liberty and Union, come up and support the 


118 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK, 


Administration in a vigorous and resolute prosecution of the 
war, the only way to save them. 

Nay, more, begin to do justice to the despised race, born 
among you, by enforcing the freedom policy of the govern- 
ment, placing arms in the hands of the freed men, to help ~ 
fight the battles of the Union, and their own way to liber- ~ 
ty, or your boasted Republican Government willl “surely 
perish !”’ then will be witnessed the introduction of general 
anarchy and confusion! C. ROBINSON. 


— 


GEN. THOMAS ON ARMING NEGROES. 


[From the Orleans American.] 


Messrs. Eprrors: I ask the insertion in the American 
of the recent speech of Gen. Thomas, as an answer to some 
strictures which recently appeared in the paper criticising 
the radical and “ extreme views of C. Robinson.” It is a 
far better answer to all such critics than anything I could 
present. It comes from high authority—no less than the 
head of the nation, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army 
and Navy of the United States, through a subaltern. 

Though a private citizen, yet I have been in no mean, 
and at length no “unpopular” work as a radical. From 
the beginning of the war, I have urged, with what little 
force I could command, general emancipation as a war 
measure—arm, train and lead the freedmen against their 
rebel masters, and thus save the lives of thousands of white 
mothers’ sons. ‘They were on the ground, acclimated, 
inured to hardships, more readily mustered, if not more 
easily, cheaper fed and paid, would not run away with the 
bounty money, could be had without any. 

That no school like the military would give them a sense 
of self-confidence and self-protection—let them help fight 
their own battles to freedom, which they seemed anxious 
and waiting to do—help subdue the rebellion and.repel any 
foreign attack that might be made upon us. 

Besides, the moral tendency of this policy on the rebels 
themselves would be to remove at once both the motive 
for the war and the power to prosecute it. 

Now behold, ye people of the great republic, especially 
pro-slavery Democrats and rebel sympathizers, look and 





THE CHURCH AND REFORM. 119 


learn! Cast away your partisan spirit, your negro-hating, 
your sympathy with treachery and treason; imbibe the 
principles of patriotism, and more of the spirit of true 
Christianity, and prepare for the new order of things ! 

This grand revolution goes slow, yet sure; though 
“wrong is heaped upon wrong, and oppression cries as 
though the event would never come, the mighty fabric of 
iniquity will be shivered into ruins!” 


THE CHURCH AND REFORM. 


May 8, 1863. 


Why is-it that this powerful instrumentality, the Church, 
has not done the great work—has not put an end to the 
slave power and the rum power, nor prevented the increase 
of them? Why has the temperance cause and the interest 
of the chattel slaves—the anti-slavery caase—been left to 
outsiders and individual church-members—to temperance 
societies and anti-slavery societies outside of the Church, 
to sometimes prosper, then again languish for want of sup- 
port—moral, political, or pecuniary, perhaps from all of 
them? And this brings me to answer my own original 
interrogation ; and if the answer is not a correct one, let 
any priest, deacon or layman, correct me. 

Exactly the reverse of the statement of my opponent is 
true. It is, that the united influence of the Church is not 
against these evils—intemperance and slavery—that they 
are not overturned. It is the “irrepressible conflict, in the 
Church, between opposing and enduring forces!” That is 
it. Members that would do, cannot, because those that 
won’t do will not! So, between these two enduring, ever- 
present forces, the interests of reform and progress are 
neutralized, ‘to keep peace in Zion.” <A single example: 
Some years ago, when I belonged to a Baptist Church, 
then quite prosperous, we passed a resolution, unanimously, 
in the identical words of the old temperance pledge. One 
leading, influential member, a deacon, was absent at the 
time. Finding out what had been done, he got a few mem- 
bers to join him, and raised a breeze, denounced the mea- 
sure as unbiblical, and continued the disturbance till we had 


120 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


to rescind the temperance resolution to restore harmony in 
the Chureh. 

Was it anything but this conflict of opinion that prevent- 
ed Dr. Cheever from uniting his church against slavery ? 
No! Perhaps Henry Ward Beecher’s chureh is somewhat 
less afflicted with these opposing forces, but they have done 
but little to cleanse the great gushing pro-slavery and rum 
fountain-head. 'They want help from the others. 

Why, sirs, the Protestant portion of the Church is full of 
the most inveterate, negro-hating Democrats! Even you 
may hear copperheads hiss right in meeting ; sometimes, 
at any rate, some brother will stride out of the meeting-house 
on double-quick, should the minister say a word in favor of 
some of God’s children, should they happen to be a little 
colored. So a bogus Democratic church member is apt to 
be quite indifferent to the temperance cause as well; there 
is a good deal of Democratic capital in still-slop. Every- 
body knows that.’ Don’t let Republicans, or anybody else, 
try to make political capital in that direction ; that ground 
is all monopolized ! 

Again: the Protestant Church North is thus divided ; not 
so South. There, it is a unit in favor of slavery, and we 
might as well look for whales up the North river as tempe- 
rance men or a temperance society there. Priests and people 
universally hold that the Bible sanctions slavery ; that a 
‘new revelation from heaven must be had to warrant oppo- 
sition to it.’ Hence, the rebels fight with the religious 
desperation characteristic of all “holy wars.” 

For information on this point, the reader is referred to 
the book written by that fearless woman writer, entitled, 
“© Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” 

Now, what shall be said of the Catholic portion of the 
Church ? Stronger than all Christendom besides—though 
less powerful in the United States, yet holding the balance 
of power many times in elections—on the whole, the most 
overshadowing of any religious organization, perhaps, in the 
world—none but the Buddhists as numerous—composed of 
no less a number than two hundred and forty millions, Greek 
and Roman—four times as many as in all the Protestant 
divisions, their bishops and priests having almost unlimited 
sway over its members. What shall we say of that? In 


THE WHISKY REBELLION AGAIN. 121 


what relation does it stand to these two great evils ? In rela- 
tion to temperance, notwithstanding the great and said to be 
successful efforts of Father Matthew, one is surprised to see 
the Catholics, especially from Ireland, where his labors were 
expended, so almost universally addicted to strong drink, 
and csnsequently opposed to the temperance cause itself, 
and, of course, pro-slavery Democrats. And, instead of our 
professed Christian people, on their approaching our shores, 
taking them by the hand and striving to lift them to a higher 
and nobler life, degrade them still lower, by stuffing them 
brimful of bad whisky and sham Democracy ; thus polluting 
the ballot-box and corrupting the fountain of power, the 
elective franchise. 

I do not pretend to say here that Protestant church- 
members do this, but I do mean to say that I have reason 
to believe that a good many of them stand and “hold the 
garments,” while the politicians in “ our party ”’ do it. 

It appears to me that if Bishop Hughes and the Catholic 
clergy generally, as well as our own, would cordially and 
resolutely put their foot down against this state of things, 
a great change for the better would soon be discoverable. 
In a word, if they would pay more attention to the welfare 
of men in this life, and let the next take care of itself more, 
the world would be the better for it. ) 

I will close with my brother’s closing words, only chan- 
ging the application : 

« Whenever you resign your cause into the hands of infidel 
_ reformers,’’ whenever such hands are foremost in pushing 
forward moral reforms, “then the finger of God will write 
Ichabod upon the” Church ! ©. Rosinson. 





THE WHISKY REBELLION AGAIN. 


Oct. 3, 1863. 


[From the State League ] 


Nor is it confined to Holley alone. But for strong drink 
to inflame the passions of desperate men and women, no such 
fearful riots as those of New York, Detroit and other places, 
—copperhead demonstrations in favor of the Slaveholders’ 
Rebellion, would not have to be recorded to disgrace the 
American annals! 


132 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


Now, Mr. Editor, I desire to inquire whether the late 
Union nominations for State officers, at Syracuse, are such 
as temperance men can consistently support ? Tf so, I see 
no good reason why the League may not be an efficient cam- 
paign paper. It would, at any rate, by opposing the cop- 
perhead nominations, be doing its legitimate work, fighting 
intemperance, and that too in a direction which is more ruin- 
ous to public morals and political liberty than in any other; 
for the Liquor power, as well as the Slave power, is monopo- 
lized by modern democracy. They areallone. They could 
not carry a single election, local or general, without them ! 

I see that the “liquor dealers”’ are on hand again to do 
service for the whisky copperhead ticket—in the right com- 
pany, and everybody is known by that he keeps. Already 
the dram cribs are being opened for the fall campaign, and 
the hybrid animals toled in; and, as Brownson says in his 
Review, the Democratic party would dwindle at once “ to a 
corporal’s guard,” but for the Irish Catholies who join and 
support it; and, he might add, who love whisky as their 
mothers’ milk, and know little of civil and religious liberty 
—and nothing is so potent with this indispensable portion 
of the party as the ‘“ o0-be-joyful !” 

One thing I believe is settled, 2. e., that Lucius Robinson’s 
nomination as Comptroller is one eminently fit to be made. 
There seems to be but one objection: Hes an honest man 
_—won’t steal! So lV infer that he is temperance, also. Few 
persons can be honest and not be temperate. 

Our neighbor, Church, is just as fit a nominee on the other 
side, ‘a slippery politician; always nibbling at the public 
crib, especially when comptroller—it’s handy then—can go 
from Albany to Albion and back, and never leave the city— 
can thrust his fingers, Colonel Crockett fashion, deeper down 
into treasury pap, stay under longer, bring up more, and 
come out dryer, than any other live man! Just the candi- 
date for the copperhead tail of the secession kite. ‘They 
wouldn’t have a man that hadn’t the true Floyd trait in him. 

Friend Church would, doubtless, preach temperance, like 
as he once did ‘“ Free Speech, Free Soil and Free Men !” 
only that it should contribute to his running for some office, 
for which he seems to have a terrible passion—oftener to 
run than win. 


LETTER TO GOVEKNOR HUNT. E 123 


There are, I know, some temperance men, teetotallers even, 
in the party. But what of it? They do nothing for the 
cause further than that, more than the merest sucker out. 
They cannot while there. It would jostle the main prop of 
the party. * * * I am bound to say, sir, that not a 
democrat in the State is advocating the cause, and for the 
same reason. * * * JI had, this morning, a conversa- 
tion with a teetotaller—my neighbor E EF , a most 
intense copperhead. Cannot act for the temperance cause, 
gentlemen, and at the same time train in the law-defying— 
both moral and legal—disloyal, copperhead ranks, who love 
party more than country —blinded and deafened by still-slop 
democracy to sighs and anguish of mothers worse than wid- 
ows, “sitting in the region and shadow of death,” and child- 
ren worse than orphans. ‘To appreciate the depth of this 
man’s party delirium,—quite rational in everything else— 
and as a specimen of copperheadism generally, read this: 
“ Yes,” said he, “ intemperance is a very great evil, but there 
is one greater, and that is ‘ Abolitionism /’” Oh, how they 
hug the sum of all villainies ! C. R. 








LETTER TO GOVERNOR HUNT. 


Oct. 15, 18563. 


{From the State League.] 


Sir: I have just read your recent famous, or infamous 
speech, reported in a copperhead journal of Lockport, and 
your subjoined long, wordy petition to the President to pre- 
serve slavery, the pet copperhead villainy, under the plea of 
a constitutional institution—a petition “to revoke his aboli- 
tion proclamation’’—offered service—a catspaw for southern 
slaveholding traitors—both sea and land pirates—doing 
their dirty work-—more dirt-eating, now wet with the blood 
of unnumbered victims sacrificed on the altar of slavery—a 
prayer of a northerner to- spare the bloody monster, while 
they are fighting for the same object. 

I think the Constitution will be worn threadbare soon, and 
in the connection and for the purpose it is pronounced so 
often by the copperhead rum party into which you have final- 
ly drifted, will be loathed by all true men. Governor Sey- 


124 FATHER ROBINSON'S SCRAP-BOOK. 


mour repeated it forty times in his last annual message, and 
you have beat him in this speech, when “ institution ” would 
have signified the most you both mean by it, and your 
followers. 

You are not party blind enough yet not to perceive that 
like causes produce like results, and that a peace patched up 
on the old mixed systems of democracy and aristocracy—of 
free and slave labor—would be illusory and transient; the 
two being radically antagonistic, can never work together 
in harmony more—did never, nor will, and between which 
there can be no peace. I say, in order to escape this inevita- 
ble conclusion, you deny that slavery is the curse of the re- 
bellion. I have to say that any person that wants to make 
a fool of himself, couldn’t do it better than by making such 
a denial. Would this rebellion ever have arisen, had there 
been no slavery? Just answer that, Mr. Hunt, and see 
where it will lead you. 

In conclusion, let me direct your attention to the fate of 
the tories of the Revolution, fighting against the constituted 
authorities that were struggling to form the Government, 
and of the Hartford Conventionists of 1812, prosecuting a 
like unholy work after the Government was established, op- 
posing it in times of public peril—the Arnolds, Hulls, and 
their traitorous crew—what was their fate? I leave you to 
answer, prepare and await a similar doom. 





UNIVERSALITY OF INTEMPERANCE. 


Dec. 25, 1863. 
[From the State League.] 


Mr. Epiror: Perhaps the readers of your excellent 
League may conclude, unless I am heard from oceasion- 
ally, that I am becoming discouraged in or indifferent to 
the great and noble cause of temperance. Not so!’ Know- 
ing, as I do, that intemperance is the greatest evil that 
afflicts the race, I shall never cease, both by precept and 
example, to do what I can to counteract it while life shall 
last ! 

Not like slavery, confined to a corner, drunkenness per- 
vades the globe; it is here, there and everywhere; in old 


GOVERNOR SEYMOUR’S MESSAGE. 125 


countries and new countries, old states and new states, old 
and young societies, old and young men; the women, 
thank heaven, are mostly clear of the pernicious habits, both 
of liquor and tobacco, and if they would but set themselves 
about it with a will, could soon rid the world of them. 

We are sojourning again at the West, (Columbus, Wis.,) 
a few months. We see drunkenness everywhere. As I 
Was passing, the other Sabbath evening, two sons of Erin 
lay together stretched across the sidewalk, like two copper- 
heads, dead drunk !—good subjects for our Holley labora- 
tory, thought I. We are told that this State has a similar 
excise law to that of New York, but nobody to enforce it. 





GOVERNOR SEYMOUR’S MESSAGE. 


Feb. 20, 1864. 


[From the State League.] 


On our return trip from Wisconsin I first saw Governor 
Seymour’s last Annual Message to the New York Legisla- 
ture in the Batavia Spzrit of the Times, at Battle Creek, 
Mich., where we were stopping a few weeks, about the 20th 
of January. A gentleman of that place, perusing it, when 
he came to the sentence announcing that “the Inebriate 
Asylum at Binghamton would be in running order some 
time in January,” exclaimed, “ Well, there! you have the 
Banner State—have beat the world; your drunkard fac- 
tory now completed in all its parts, legislative, executive 
and judicial. What stupendous machinery! what states- 
manship! Drunkards not only made by law, but now a 
place contrived at the public expense to stow away the 
finished articles, and all run by the tears of worse than wid- 
ows and orphans, supported by the people’s money—by the 
tax-payers. What a meek and patient set!” 

_ LT replied: “ Bully for the Empire State—of steeples and 
pulpits; ought to have an anniversary set apart for the 
celebration of the mighty achievement.” 

‘There were other passages in that Message, had it not 
been so long since delivered, I would like well to have crit- 
icised, as I took the liberty to do the year before. 

I would like to have called his attention to the fault of 
frequent repetitions of many of his points on national 


126 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


affairs, as though commoners like me wouldn’t understand 
by once stating a subject. to them. But the Governor is 
understood. It is in substance only a rehearsal of his last 
year’s Message : finding fault with every act of the Govern- 
ment at Washington, military or monetary ; setting the 
State Government above and against the Federal, secession- 
like, with no word of hearty rebuke for the rebellion or 
against the rebels, but by indirection justifying both. 

I would like to have called the attention of all his cop- 
perhead brethren who read the Message (in this lies the 
ereat advantage between public documents and their pri- 
vate criticism: everybody reads the one and but very few 
the other,) to one important admission. He yields the 
point hitherto so stoutly maintained by himself and parti- 
sans, that ‘“‘you can’t beat the South: they’ll prove too 
much for the North.” He owns up that they are already 
beaten, ‘“ subdued.”” And, Mr. Editor, did you notice how 
this point is disposed of Why, his little finger is bigger 
than the loins of Abraham Lincoln; his “ peace policy ” 
isn’t worth mentioning, only to be sneered at. Hear him: | 

« And now, in the hour of triumph, appeals should be 
made to States in rebellion. The triumph won by our sol- 
diers in the field should be followed up by a peace making 
policy of the statesmen in the Cabinet.” 

Remember, reader, this was uttered a month subsequent 
to the “ peace making policy” and terms offered to the rebels 
by the President. But that was worthless—of no account. 
Give me the helm and something would be done worth ap- 
proval. ‘The Union as it was” would be restored, still ce- 
mented by the blood of the slave. ‘ Wise statesmanship 
can now bring the war to a close, upon the terms sacredly 
avowed at the outset of the contest.” None of that precious 
article in vogue now at the head of affairs. Here probably 
is what is meant by “ terms sacredly avowed” and announced 
by General McClellan on assuming the command of the Po- 
tomac Army : “ Understand one thing clearly : not only will 
we abstain from all interference with your slaves, but we 
will, on the contrary, wth an iron hand, crush any attempt 
at nsurrection on their part.” Pretty strong. Wonder if 
the General has altered his mind any in the rapid march of 
events since then? The Governor, it seems, has not. 





GOVERNOR SEYMOUR’S MESSAGE. Lz 


That is the policy. Put down the rebellion, but save 
slavery alive—don’t touch that, only to protect and guard it. 
Too precious a jewel! You tried that policy two years, and 
it proved an utter failure. We have tried the present and 
opposite policy a year with signal success. It would be fool- 
hardiness to return; though that would suit the Governor 
infinitely better—would restore one of the hobbies of the 
copperhead democracy—(they had two, slavery and rum, 
by which they prospered in power and spoils.) 

Here is Governor Seymour’s cut and thrust and ill-con- 
cealed hatred of President Lincoln’s peace policy. Hear 
him : 

“The one tenth who would accept the proclamation as 
the price of power, would not only govern the States made 
by EXECUTIVE DECREE, but they would also govern the 
North.” 

This is about as utopian as many other passages in this 
special official plea for slaveholding rebels. But admit that 
the country would drift to this condition of things at last. 
What then? It would only be a change of base—a shift- 
ing of the government from the slave power to the anti-slave 
power, and that is what the Governor most dreads, hence his 
doleful broodings over a lost country. The slave power, of 
_ which the Governor and his partisans form a part, always 
having had both the governing of the Slave States, and 

“also of the North.” 

One more point. How blind the Governor and his 
“friends” are. Slavery already dead, and they do not know 
it—can’t see it. Everybody else can, North and South. 

Everybody else knows, too, that to restore the Union with 
slavery, the rebels have got to be subdued by force and 
arms, and we have no more than that to do to restore it. 
without slavery. They have repeated often enough, by 
both word and deed, that they utterly rejected all attempts 
at union with the Free States; that they had staked all on 
separation and a Slave Empire. 

Now, what nonseuse to talk of bringing them back on any 
terms we might offer, till they are thoroughly whipped into 
it—are obliged to yield to superior military power ; besides, 
the Governor admits, or rather complains, that the “ Gov- 
ernment and a majority of the people’ (did he reckon the 


128 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


soldiers in the field?) are against him—blindly rushing to 
ruin—fastening upon their unconscious necks a “military 
despotism.” Poor man! as was said by a certain personage 
of another, “he don’t know when he is whipped !”—or im- 
prudent enough to betray an opinion that the people are in- 
‘ capable of self-government. They should be careful that no 
old party fossil be allowed to again insult and misrepresent 
them from the Gubernatorial Chair. C. RoBINson. 


THE EXCISE LAW. 


[From the State League. ] 


F'RIEND Carson: I want to say another brief word to 
the readers of the League, and to temperance men and wo- 
men generally. Now it is evident enough that we must at 
present take the Excise Law as it is. Even if the Legisla- 
ture was inclined to amend it in the manner suggested in 
my last, or in any other way to make it more effectual, the 
close of the session is so near that new matter could not be 
acted upon ; soif the law as it is, is enforced at all, itmust be 
by temperance men without pay—only the consciousness of 
having attempted a high and important duty. “Make brick 
without straw,” under the liquor-sellers’ and liquor-suckers’ 
lash; so let us make the most of it. 

And what I have to suggest is, that as the time ap- 
proaches tor license granting, that we bestir ourselves so as 
to induce the Commissioners, if they are not already inclined 
that way, to put the price of license at the highest figure 
allowable under the law: $100. 

Then let the licensee be made to understand clearly, 
that if he or she does not live strictly to its provisions, they will 
be switched for it. In this way, I think, we would have fewer 
licenses granted, and consequently less numbers of licensed 
drunkard, pauper and criminal-makers to watch. C. R. 


THE TRUE REMEDY. 129 


THE TRUE REMEDY. 


July 30, 1864. 


[From the State League.] 


Let me say a brief word to the readers of the League on 
the war, its progress, its cause and cure: 

I claim no credit whatever for seeing from the beginning 
of the rebellion its true remedy, 7. e—Knock out the under- 
pinning—its base foundation, and ’twould tumble of its own 
weight. Free the slaves, arm, train, and lead them against 
their rebel masters ; likewise, muster into the service of the 
Union, all the free colored that could be reached, whether 
in Canada or the States. The war was waged on their ac- 
count, and consequently they should bear a large share of its 
dangers ;—thus save many precious lives of white mothers’ 
sons—that they were already on the ground, knew the 
lay of the land better than troops from a distance, already 
inured to hardships and the climate, easier and cheaper 
mustered into the service, know obedience and subjection, 
could be had by a word of authoritative encouragement, 
without extraordinary bounties, would not run away with 
them if paid—have nothing to run back to but chains and 
death. I repeat, it required no superior wisdom to see this 
from the beginning, which would have removed both the 
motive for the war, and the power to prosecute it; anybody 
could see it who could look to effect from cause on a simple 
proposition. Hence I did what little I could both among 
government officials, including the President, and the peo-. 
ple, to bring it about. 

Had the policy been adopted and vigorously prosecuted 
from the beginning, volunteering and drafting of white men 
would have ended long ago, and the rebellion too. A half 
million of them might now have been in the field just as 
well as a hundred thousand. 

But now, after many bloody trials, the policy is finally 
adopted in full ; now let it be prosecuted to a purpose, in 
spite of the tory faction, Vallandingham, the Seymours, 
Woods, noxious Weeds and their traitorous crew, who not 
only oppose the raising of colored troops, but of all troops, 
to beat down rebellion, doing just as Jeff Davis & Co. 


130 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


would have them do, who, notwithstanding their violent 
opposition to the cause of liberty and Union, and in defense 
of slavery, only prolong, not defeat the glorious consumma- 
tion of the bloody struggle. Like fire against the wind, 
the cause goes steadily, more completely and surely on, 
and it is sometimes amusing to see these crazy partisans 
trying to stem the tide of the popular current, paddling 
their leaky canoe up stream—ap Salt River—against wind 
and tide, while the cause of universal freedom glides majes- 
tically down and along the tide and current of events. 

Why do they not look and learn, and no longer fight 
against the decrees of Jehovah and the will of the people ? 
Why can they not discern the signs of the times, that the 
slave power, of which they are part and parcel, can never 
more rule the country through the enslavement of the poor 
negro? ‘They are making a death-struggle to cling to this 
scepter, but it has departed from their grasp forever. 

How surprising the march of events! Slavery abolished 
in the District of Columbia, prohibited in the territories, 
abolished in all the insurgent States by proclamation, by 
popular vote in West Virginia, in Maryland and Louisiana, 
and emancipation taking deep root among the people of 
Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky, all the free States at 
the last election declaring against slavery, except, perhaps, 
New York, a decisive vote in Congress to prohibit the sum 
of villainies by constitutional amendment, the late Balti- 
more Convention placing a plank in its platform to the same 
effect, and heartily indorsed by both candidates put in nom- 
ination—Lincoln and Johnson—and the odious Fugitive 
Slave Law repealed! Surely, the world moves! Still, 
the copperheads don’t see it. 

Last, but not least, we have a protective tariff, which the 
slave-power has always hitherto been able to prevent; and 
looking to the field, the signs are that the military power 
of the gigantic rebellion must soon be effectually crushed. 
With peace restored on a firm footing, the slave system 
supplanted by the general introduction of free labor, we 
may well hope to enter upon a new career for the fulfill- 
ment of our mission. C. R. 


THE DEMOCRATIC REVENUE. 131 


THE DEMOCRATIC REVENUE. 


{From the State League.] - 


A drinking man here, on whom I have frequently urged 
the claims of the temperance cause, said to me, the other 
day, “ Why are you always so strenuous against the use of 
liquor and tobacco?’ “ Because,” said I, “ their use is so 
pernicious, hurtful, useless, destructive and ruinous. I know 
I have labored a long while and a great deal to check their 
use, especially the former; have expended considerable 
effort on yourself and other individuals, and to little pur- 
pose, too; and if I ever was reconciled to have you drink 
and puff and squirt, it is now; for most of the drinkers are 
Democrats, and by keeping up the habit you augment the 
revenue for our purposes, which you would never pay so 
willingly as in this way.” 

And I have thought considerably on the subject since, 
till now it comes to expression on this wise. Perhaps the 
war, indeed, may help check intemperance in this direction, 
as it is likely to uproot that other twin-devil, slavery ! 

Now I do not expect that a very large share of our pres- 
ent drinkers will quit their life-long habit, let the price of 
the “blue ruin” be ever so dear. But it seems to me that 
if these high rates can be maintained, increased rather than 
diminished, young men, and all those not already on the 
road to ruin, will not be very apt, many of them, to get 
into the habit of drinking, so as to fill up the future ranks 
of the drunkard’s army. So with tobacco. C. R. 





THE BALTIMORE NOMINATION. 


Dear Frienps: I am rather pained at the course your 
paper is taking in this presidential campaign. Iam not a 
Republican in the true sense, for when they went for restric- 
tion I was for abolition ; yet I have gone and still go their 
ticket, because they are nearer my position than any other 
political organization which has or has had any prospect of 
success, hoping they would progress up to my standpoint, 
which, indeed, they have partly done, 2. e., declared for uni- 


te 


132 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


versal emancipation, which is unmistakably indicated by 
the unanimous vote of the Republican members in Congress 
at the late session, for the prohibitory amendment of the 
Constitution, embodied in the Baltimore platform, and which 
is in accord with the views of both the Union candidates, 
Lincoln and Johnson. The most radical abolitionist could 
not ask nor expect more. Now “ stick a pin there,” and go 
in to secure that amendment, and when accomplished we 
obtain all we ever asked or expected. When we seeabody - 
of men that succeeded in 1860 in electing their candidates 
on the principle, of restriction of slavery in the territories, 
and stood to the principle against all the mighty pressure 
that the slave power, North and South, cculd combine 
against them, with the certain prospect of civil war unless 
they did recede, and have sustained the war, when forced © 
upon the country, with unswerving devotion, nearly to final 
triumph against that power, with the whole pro-slavery 
Democracy, North and South, and all the despotisms of 
Europe throwing their moral and material, if not their mili- 
tary weight, in the scale of the slave-power—I1 say when we 
see a party of men standing with such sublime grandeur, 
pressing steadily on, without a moment’s pause or flinching, 
toward the triumphant close of the mighty confiict, I, for 
one, can trust them to do the rest, and turn in to help what 
little I can. And the success at the ballot-box in Novem- 
ber, backing up the triumphs now being won in the field, 
will complete the work. 

On the other hand, should the Union candidates be defeat- 
ed, and succeeded by the opposition, one of two things is 
inevitable: either the surrender of all we have gained by 
fighting—the Mississippi, the forts, fortifications, territory, 
&c.—and a separation, or a reunion wherein the despotic 
sway of the slave-power will be more absolute than ever 
before. Hence I deem it of the utmostimportance that we 
should let no brand of discord enter, but close up the ranks, 
so as to act in perfect accord with all the forces that can be 
mustered to prevent so terrible a catastrophe. 

The New York Tribune has likewise stood aloof, till now 
it has come out energetically for the Baltimore nominations 
as the only hope of success. Now, would it not be better 
for your journal to follow suit? We should contend for 
principles, not men. ‘ ; 


-REPLY TO A FRIEND. 133 


REPLY TO “A FRIEND.” 


[From the State Leaguce.] 


Over this signature is published a letter in the League, 
and though written with ability, contains some things I 
think ought not to be written and published; therefore, an- 
other friend craves a space for a short review. 

I fear this writer, as well as most Americans, especially 
the members of the slaveocratic party, have yet to learn 
the difference between Liberty and License—the proper use 
of the freedom of speech and of the press; and their abuse 
should never be tolerated, even in time of peace, much less 
now in this life and death struggle of the Government with 
armed, organized treason, North as well as South. All 
such licentious papers ought to be suppressed. 

The pen, it is said, is more potent than the sword. Be 
it so, then, and while the Government is applying the latter 
on the enemy in front, good old clever Uncle Samuel might 
strike to advantage to himself a careless blow or two over 
the shoulder among the old tory rats, the enemy in the rear. 
“Tf soft words and tufts of grass won’t do, try the virtue 
of metal.” 

It is true enough that the sublime impudence and tyran- 
ny of this whisky-drinking, slave-breeding Republic, with ~ 
the precosity of its abominations, “has brought the Govern- 
ment to shame sooner than our holiest prophets predicted !” 

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the patient’s life is too 
valuable ; notwithstanding his being thus drugged nearly to 
death by political and partisan quacks, he should not be 
disposed of with the flippancy of this writer, and left to 
die, without an effort worthy of a free people to remove the 
corroding disturbances and save the Republic, not only to 
wipe out our own shame and place it on the course of glory 
intended by its founders—not only for ours, and the bene- 
fit of our own posterity, but for that of the struggling mil- 
lions of humanity everywhere, whose hope and heart when 
it dies will die with it! 

We know that the fathers left planted in the organic 
structure of the government a seed that has, contrary to 


134 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


their cherished hope, if not sanguine expectations, grown 
and expanded with the growth and expansion of the nation, 
till the upas tree has ripened, and is shedding its red blood 
fruit; but, moreover, while this bloody fruit is falling like 
hail around the tree of liberty—while this national devil is 
being cast out, never say FAIL of the national cause! while 
there is a single plank of the old ship afloat—while a drop 
of blood flows in the veins of freemen, or those who would 
be free, or the last dollar in the exchequer remains unex- 
pended, never have it known to mankind that slavery was 
able to subvert this free, or meant to be free government, 
though its enemies swarm like locusts of Egypt! Slavery 
is man-made, and must perish! Freedom, and the love of 
it, spring eternal in the human soul, and can never die ! 

Horace, of the Trzbune, too, though usually steadfast, 
seems to wane a little just now, while the storm appears to 
howl more fiercely, front and rear, especially in the latter, 
saying we can’t save the Union unless the Democrats help, 
instead of their continuing to hinder, as they have done. 
Let them how]. The sham Democracy lives in the life of 
slavery, and will die with it, pe as whisky may prolong 
its miserable life. © 

«A fire in the rear,” in perilous times, is no new thing in 
our country’s history, and though the spoilers have done 
their utmost to retard, and have retarded, even. sometimes, 
till all appeared to be lost, yet overmastering victory came 
at last, and the great Revolutions in America for the rights 
of man, on sea and land, have hitherto triumphed, and so 
will this, the grandest, most magnificent of them all._— 


A GENTLE CRITICISM. 135 


A GENTLE CRITICISM. 


Aug. 18, 1864. 


' “The President, perhaps, meant to intimate that he could not re- 
store” (re-consign, it ought to read,) ‘‘ to slavery, negroes in the army, 
and otherwise freed by the Proclamation, and that so far slavery must 
be abandoned.”— Rochester Evening Express, Aug. 16, 1864. 


Rather coppery. “The Union as it was,’’ merely—ce- 
mented still by the blood of the slave, to fester and ferment 
yet further the bloody issue--if thought, it ought not to be 
published in a professedly anti-slavery, anti-rebellion, Union, 
Administration journal. 'Thatis the judgment of one of your 
patrons. 

Tt is recorded that once on a time Mr. Lincoln declared 
that we could not remain a government part free and part 
slave; that we must become wholly the one or the other. 
And now the Hxpress apologises for the President for pro- 
gressing with the march of events, and as opinion ripens, so 
that, instead of restoring the Union “ by freeing no slaves, a 
part or all of them,” he now takes the issue squarely, making 
the total “ abandonment” of the brutal institution a condi- 
tion of restoration. 

Let copperheads have all this dirty work to themselves— 
this quack practice of trying to cure the patient with the 
fever in him—to suppress the rebellion without removing the 
cause of it. Let no Union paper or persons attempt to med. 
dle with such nonsense. 

Has the Express yet to learn that slavery is rebellion, 
and rebellion slavery,—are identical,—cannot be separated ; 
that when one goes down both of necessity must, and until 
then there can be no peace? ‘That freedom and slavery, a 
free labor system and a slave labor system, are eternal an- 
tagonisms? ‘That they never did, nor can they ever live 
and work together in harmony ; nay, more, without perpet- 
ual war? Sirs, look back and trace the history of the two 
systems in the attempt to work them together in this coun- 
try; then answer! Don’t let the Express, then, grow weak- 
kneed at the high resolve of President Lincoln to extirpate 
the old disturber, the soure of all our great woes. 

Read once again that more than elegant, that poetic ex- 


136 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


pression of Governor Seward, “the irrepressible conflict of 
opposing and enduring forces.’ Do you believe it? It’s 
true as gospel. 

And again, read from the “ Union Platform,” heading the 
editorial columns of the Hapress, and which is heartily in- 
dorsed by both candidates, President and Vice-Presicent, 
Lincoln and Johnson: “ We are in favor, furthermore, of 
such an amendment of the Constitution as shall terminate, 
and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the living 
or the jurisdiction of the United States !” 

It is enough for northern allies of rebels to go against ‘he 
wiping clean out of the foul blot, and for retaining it in the 
Union, or in separation, where its existence can, by any possi- 
bility, be prolonged. The unanimous vote of their represen- 
tatives in Congress against this measure, has effectually torn 
off the mask, and shown the hypocrites, who pretended not 
to sustain slavery for its sake, but for the sake of the Consti- 
tution, and left them in the defense of slavery, pure and sim- 
ple. Now let them fight the battles of slavery and rebel- 
lion, while we take the naked issue. and wage exterminating 
war to the whole trinity of villains, slavery rebellion and 
copperheadism, alias whisky democracy! ‘They are all one 
crew ! 

Respectfully yours, C. R. 





LETTER TO GERRIT SMITH. 


August 19, 1864. 


Dear Sir: I have read numerous speeches and other 
productions of yours since the war began, with great satis- 
faction. But there is one point on which we widely differ, 
and ene or the other of us is radically wrong. J much ad- 
mire your reply to the Wade-Davis Protest, excepting this 
sentence, which is the immediate occasion of this letter : 

“Those abolitionists are also to be condemned who put 
the abolition of slavery before the suppression of the re- 
bellion.”’ 

Now, if this be true logic, it upsets all my long life max- 
ims of the great and unerring law of causes and effects. I 


LETTER TO GERRIT SMITH, 137 


- have always had wrong conceptions of it if you are right on 
this oft-repeated opinion. My theory is, that all disturb- 
ances have a cause, and in order to remove them their cause 
must first be removed, and that all other practice is sheer 
quackery. Am I right ? 

Now let us, for a moment, apply this rule to the case in 
hand. What is the cause of the rebellion? The true an- 
swer is, slavery. We both agree in that. No one is sim- 
pleton enough to deny it. ‘Then, surely, if this hypothesis 
be correct, those abolitionists who strike first at the cause of 
the rebellion to remove it are right, and to be justified, not 
condemned. 

Furthermore, we will agree when I say that slayery and 
the slave is the foundation on which the rebellion rests, and 
by which it is sustained and prolonged to this hour. It 
could not last a week without them. Nay, more; rebellion 
never could have been inaugurated without them. The first 
breakfast could not be served up without them; no provi- 
sions for the table or the camp could be furnished without 
them, teams driven or fortifications erected without them. 
So then, taking them away without placing the negro strength 
on our side, we would be striking out the foundation of re- 
bellion, and of necessity it must tumble down of its own 
weight and weakness, like a house, or a barn, or any other 
structure to knock out the wnder-pinning ; and how much more 
rapidly consummated if this weight were thrown into the 
scale for the Union! 

Again, it has been hitherto,.in all ages and countries, a 
settled maxim of war to weaken an enemy in the most vul- 
nerable and vital point, instead of which we have been for 
the best of four years strewing fields with white men’s 
garments rolled in blood, fighting them in a compact body ; 
for the first two years strengthening that weak point, in- 
stead of taking advantage of it; not even making the at- 
tempt that John Brown did with seventeen men all told, 
which convulsed the whole of slavedom from center to cir- 
cumference; no! Now, when all their whites have left the 
plantations in the interior, leaving few but slaves, spread 
out underneath the whole of rebeldom, a vast mine, a mag- 
azine, a volcano, yet we must not touch it; it would kin- 
dle a great fire in the rear; it would hurt somebody ; wait 


188 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


till we put down the rebellion by main strength first, letting | 
the cause of it take care of itself. Was there ever so stu- 
pid a blunder made by any people ? 

So we continue to rake and scrape white men together, 
to send down there from the cold North, when there is a 
vast congregation of men already on the spot, inured to the 
climate, to hardships and hard fare, tough and hardy, ready 
and zealous to help fight their own battles to freedom and 
suppress the bloody rebellion where they so often got the 
cold shoulder from our negro-hating side of the contest. 

Most respectfully and fraternally yours, for “ putting 
down the rebellion,” C. RoBINSsoN. 


THE RECORD OF THE “ DEMOCRACY.” 


[From the State League.] 


Mr. Epiror: ‘There is no craft that can long sail under 
false colors without detection—nor no party of men can act 
under a false title without exposure. The present demo- 
cratic party claims the name without the principles. There 
is not a vestige of true democracy left with that organiza- 
tion. The old and true democracy signified freedom,—mo- 
dern democracy means slavery—it has struck hands with it, 
is aiding the slaveholders’ rebellion, is part and parcel of 
it—of the slave power of the country. 

This is the first count in the indictment I am here record- 
ing against it. 

2d. To overthrow the Federal Government, and estab- 
lish a slave empire on its ruins, for which purpose its mem- 
bers have organized secret combinations all over the loyal 
States—professed peace men, secretly plotting treason, re- 
bellion, war and bloodshed among their neighbors ! 

3d. It has converted intoxicating liquors into a political, 
partisan power. 

4th. It has converted Catholicism in this country to its 
party purposes. 

5th. The New York Central Railroad is run by the same 
political partisans, has lent itself to subserve the interests of 
the democratic, rule or ruin, pro-slavery party. . 


RECORD OF THE DEMOCRACY. 139 


6th. Ninety per cent. of all the ignorant, violent shoulder- 
hitters, rum-sellers, ruam-suckers and dead rabbits, have drift- 
ed.into it, whether Catholic born, or natives, a dangerous 
and seditious element of which mobs are composed. These, 
with few exceptions, belong to the sham democratic church. 

We ask, then, why judgment should not be pronounced 
against it? Why it should not be smashed, disbanded, and 
diffused into original elements, and if not cured, absorbed 
by the great mass of better men, very many of whom they 
have in that party, by whom it is sustained, and but for 
whom they would have been ground up and diffused long 
ago. But in spite of proffers and entreaties of Union men, 
they would have party before country ; now let bullets and 
ballots, on the one hand, and on the other, sweep them into 
a political oblivion beyond the resurrecting power of the last 
trump! Let the memory of rebels and traitors, North and 
South, rot in their own infamy ! 

Once more. The Chicago platform is a curious medley 
of contradictory assertions without proof, hating the Union 
soldiers, yet flatter them for their votes. It is the last des- 
perate cast of rebels declaring the war a failure, and if the 
people vote it so by electing the candidate placed upon it, 
there is the end, not only of | the war, but of the Union. To 
talk of a Convention of States to restore the Union is child- 
ish. The Union will be already severed—we shall have 
committed national suicide by our own votes. We may have 
an armistice, a cessation of hostilities—in the nature of things 
we would be compelled to have them. 

By electing McClellan and Pendleton, we place it on offi- 
cial record before the world by our vote, by which foreign 
countries alone judge what our will and opinion is, that we 
have tried the experiment every four years without suc- 
cess—thus own ourselves beaten. What would these na- 
tions say? What would France and England say and do ? 
Why, they would say and do the most natural thing in the 
world—that which they have all along been inclined, both by 
interest and impulse, to say and do, and what the rebels are 
most anxious for: You have fought them four years, and 
own yourself worsted. That is long enough for a bloody de- 
vastating civil war, now hands off, let them go in peace; we 
want their ports open to their commerce and trade, of which 


140 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


we have been deprived for these four years to our great de- 
triment ; you must therefore raise your blockade, or we will 
help the confederates do it, “and in the meantime recognize 
their government.” Besides, these countries have a very 
large stake in “ confederate bonds,” and money is no mean 

power in any country. 7 
_ No matter if we tell that huge lie by every vote that the 
war is a failure, even should Richmond fall before the day 
of voting, we would be swept irresistibly to that conclusion 
before the 4th of March ensuing, even three weeks after the 
official recall of the canvass should reach Europe, would 
place Uncle Samuel between an armed monarchy on the 
north, an armed slave despotism on the south, and an armed 
Mexican yearling French Empire on the south-west, and he 
would be done for. I leave the reader to detail the conse- 
quences in his own time and way. 

But we shall shun the yawning gulf by a long and safe 
distance. So all hands aboard of the old ship of state, and 
run her entirely clear of all the breakers, while Lincoln and 
Johnson stand at the helm. C. R. 


OUR NATIONAL DELIVERANCE. 


Nov. 1864. 


[From the State League.] 


Bless ye the Lord, brethren, for our great National Deliverance. 


In my last, October 22, in which I undertook to point out 
some of the calamities in store for us in case of the success 
of the candidates placed on the Chicago Surrender Plat- 
form: immediate ending of the war and the Union with it ; 
a recognition of the Confederacy by foreign countries, by 
England and France; the Confederacy up and the Federal 
Government down, affectin g all their mutual interests in the 
same direction, plunging the latter into utter and irretriev- 
able ruin—I closed by saying we shall shun the breakers by 
a long and safe deliverance, placing Lincoln and Johnson 
at the helm, and this utterance is now a realization. Nor 
can we now realize the sublime magnitude of this peaceful 


OUR NATIONAL DELIVERANCE. 141 


conquest of the ballot, both here and the world over, giving 
heart and strength to the struggling millions everywhere. A 
newspaper article can hardly contain a tithe of the thoughts 
that press for utterance on the mighty subject. 

But, kind reader, let me sketch a very brief summary of 
the immediate past, anda glance at the great future of 
America. We have just passed through a general election 
with unusual quiet, though at the same time a terrible evil 
was on our hands, and from whatever causes this quiet, it 
must have a very salutary influence in favor of an elective 
government. 

It is claimed that the thorough enforcement of the prohib- 
itory clause of the liquor law relative to elections in the 
cities and large towns, (the rural districts are a“ law to 
themselves”) contributed much towards this quiet, which is 
doubtless true. There is, in my mind, another important 
reason. ‘The fortunate and timely discovery and exposure 
by the government of that wide-spread, secret, armed con- 
Spiracy and treason, and the nearly simultaneous disclosures 
of the gigantic swindle attempted on the soldiers’ vote, put 
the copperhead democracy on its good behavior, for from 
that quarter usually came all violence and riot; this ele- 
ment, doubtless, was kept more peaceable for the reason that 
less liquor was to be had, and the leaders and more respect- 
able, better behaved, to counteract the damning disgrace 
likely to attach to the party by the revelations of villainy, 
were better behaved. 

The discovery of the wholesale counterfeit of the soldiers’ 
vote cast a wide spread gloom and doubt over the loyal 
masses relative to the result in the State, revealing at once 
the cause of the confidential air suddenly assumed by the 
Seymourites. 

But the result shows two things. Ist. They did notquite 
succeed in their hellish designs. 2nd. That though they 
did not succeed, yet they must have smuggled in a large 
number of the “ Marrow-fat” votes, else how is it to be ac- 
counted for, that the State last year gave 36,000 Union 
majority, and this year gave not more than 6,000, while 
nearly all the changes, which were not afew, were from 
their side to ours ? 

But let us rejoice with exceeding great joy that the Em- 


142 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


pire State is saved from another two years of misrule by ~ 
that arch demagogue and traitor, Horatio Seymour, the most 
dangerous public man in America, Jefferson Davis not ex- 
cepted. The one is open in his treason, the other crafty and 
covert—a pious knave in politics. 

Vallandingham stands in the same relation to him, that 
Blennerhassett, another traitorous son of Ohio, did to Aaron 
Burr, a good stool-pigeon. 

It is high time the party was dissolved and dispersed. 
It has become exceedingly dangerous to civil and religious 
liberty. 

The southern branch inaugurated civil war in the interest 
of slavery, and which they still prosecute with a fiendish bru- 
tality unknown to the most barbarous savages. ‘The north- 
ern branch was already joined to the southern, nor did it 
break therefrom, but stood consenting, preferring party to 
country. 

It has drawn, or they have gravitated to it, or both, all 
the Irish Catholics in a body, a numerous and powerful re- 
ligious sect, with a priesthood holding supreme sway over 
its members, transplanted here from beyond seas, led by na- 
tive born democratic partisan schemers, have converted in- 
toxicating liquors into a mighty party power to carry elections. 

Nearly all the base birds of our own and all countries, 
who congregate in New York and other cities, dissipated, vi- 
cious and violent, are found there. The gigantic swindle on 
the soldiers’ vote by Seymour’s agents, and the illegal and 
fraudulent voting in these cities, including the Catholic Irish 
vote, which is said and believed never to have been so unan- 
imous, nearly lost the State to freedom and progress. 

By raising the bloody hand to strike for slavery, the 
conspirators wiwittingly aimed a sure and fatal blow at the 
institution they sought to perpetuate. The northern wing, 
linked to the slave, Calhoun, state rights, secession war, 
must and will go down with it. 

Thus, in the good providence of God, the blow aimed at 
the government has recoiled upon slavery and the slaveo- 
crats, North and South, and we have the consolation of 
seeing the whole gigantic conspiracy, its actors, in compen- 
sation for our great sacrifices in both blood and treasure, 
doomed, dead, damned, and buried in one common grave! 





- OUR NATIONAL DELIVERANCE. 143 


our present sacrifices infinite gain hereafter in consequence. 
As their factious partisan opposition to their own gov- 
ernment hitherto, and sympathy with the rebellion, has 
not proved a very paying investment, only to prolong the 
war, it is hoped, if they cannot now help, that they will at 
least stop the opposition, while the armed rebellion be sub- 
dued in the only way it can be, by martial power. 

I have space for but a word on the brighter side of our 
future. We have placed in the second office in the Repub- 
lic, in my humble opinion, a right man in the right place—— 
the fittest in all America. Already he is claimed by the 
four million bondmen just emerging from their prison-house 
of slavery as their “ Moses.” 

For one, I would confide the whole immense subject to 
the Vice President elect, to dispose of the colored race. 
among us in his own time and way. He knows their con- 
dition and wants, and has a heart and will to do them per- 
fect justice. As to the further suppression of armed 
rebellion, I would trust the department having it in hand: 
the gallant army and navy and their commanders, Grant, 
Sherman, Sheridan, Farragut, Porter, etc., and slavery, the 
cause of the rebellion, to the President and Congress, to 
sweep it from the land by constitutional amendment. 

In conclusion, I would say of the temperance cause, to 
which we can now—since slavery, the chief of all villain- 
ies, is on its last legs—pay our undivided attention: First, 
ministers of the gospel have done efficient service in the 
cause of union and freedom ; now let them keep straight on 
to help suppress this other great evil, intemperance. ‘The 
churches, being already organized bodies, let their influence 
be brought unitedly against it. It is a part of a Christian’s 
work. Secondly, let outsiders, individuals and _ societies, 
slack not in their efforts. 1am for prohibition. If to pro- 
hibit the use of strong drink on election days for a quarter 
of a mile around the polls has such beneficial effects, what 
might be expected from a law, as well enforced as was that 
clause, prohibiting its sale every where, at all times? 

C. RB. 


144 ; FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE FOR WOMEN. 


[From the State League.] 


Mr. Eprror: While you are publishing some former 
numbers from slavedom, I will make a bran-new proposition 
for your readers and contributors to think of, talk and 
write about ; and that is no less a revolutionary proposi- 
tion than for women to vote! Native-born women, tax- 
payers, especially ; yes, and all others. 

The first, foremost, and the great all-absorbing anxiety 
and inquiry of parents for their sons, when they arrive at 
suitable age, and begin to enter company, is, Do they, 
while absent, drink ? Do they associate with company that 
drink? These young men they go with: do they drink ? 
Do they resort to and frequent the rum-saloons and there 
‘drink? These breathing-holes of hell, scattered up and 
down all over the land, especially in cities and villages, so 
thick that it requires a good navigator to shun them—do 
they drop in there and drink ? 

This is the all-absorbing question, especially with mothers 
and sisters of the young men of the land: Do they drink ? 
These mothers and sisters have the greatest stake in the 
matter, for they are the greatest sufferers from this drink- 
ing which leads to drunkenness. ‘Then extend to them the 
elective franchise, the right to vote, so that they can better 
protect themselves from the scourge of intemperance, which 
is mostly confined to the male population; and mark me, 
they would vote to the wiping clean out of this mighty 
evil; your rum-sellers and rum-suckers be choked off; 
your whisky and beer-holes plugged up ; your rum-Judges, 
excise commissioners, your freeholders that petition for 
licenses, your sheriffs, constables and policemen brushed 
off the track. Your drunken legislators—your Senators no 
longer run staggering into the Senate Chamber, enacting 
laws, legalizing drunkard making, themselves under them, 
but sent reeling to their own “ hole in the ground to draw 
the hole in after them.” 

And why not allow women to vote? Who answers? 
Every native-born girl of ten summers is better qualified to 
exercise the right than three-fourths of the foreign-born cast 


THE SLAVE POWER AND RUM POWER. 145 


upon us, who, in about that proportion, can neither read nor 
write—have to make their mark !—and in about the same 
proportion both men and women sell liquor, drink, get drunk, 
violate the liquor laws with impunity, hate the negro, and 
vote for rum, ruin and slavery. 

The distinguished inventists, Watt and Stevens, could 
not navigate the steamboat smoothly with only one paddle- 
wheel; Fulton saw the defect, applied the second wheel, 
so as to have one on each side, and she balanced, turned, 
and rode on the water’ majestically! We have always 
been trying to paddle our ship of state with one wheel, and 
it proves an up-hill business. Now apply the other wheel— 
the female, the dual force. You will sooner or later have 
to do it, to make your governmental machinery run 
smoothly. C. R. 


THE SLAVE POWER AND RUM POWER! 


[From the State League.] 


The first, Haman-like, hangs dangling on its own gal- 
-lows, and the latter, an inconceivably more ruinous and wide- 
spread of the two evils, ought to be on the funeral pile, and 
will be after a few more million of human sacrifices upon its 
bloody altar. Men, willing victims, involving themselves 
and families—wives and mothers, worse than widows! Child- 
ren, worse than orphans! entailing wretchedness, poverty 
and crime! American slavery, which is now as good as 
dead, sacrificed by its own hands, had some redeeming quali 
ties. Slaves were producers, and added something to the 
common stock for the sustenance of mankind. Liquor-deal- 
ers, what benefit is there in liquors, in your business, to the 
world? Let him answer who can! ‘There is not a single 
redeeming trait, not a fraction of offset to their incalculable 
waste, both in life, money and morals, and before an awaken- 
ed and corrected public sentiment and appetite, this stupend- 
ous evil must, and will likewise go down! ‘The people, the 
tax-payers, will not much longer quietly stand the brazen 
impudence of the drunkard-maker, from manufacturer to 
trafficker, like the slave-breeder and dealer (sign, the auction- 


146 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


block), hanging out his shingle on every corner and “ hole in 
the ground !”’ to decoy our young men and boys into the 
“snare of the fowler.” ‘The rumbling’and muttering is al- 
ready heard—the ground-swellseare already beginning to be 
felt, which will cause an upheaval equal to that produced by 
the first hostile shot on Fort Sumter. 

Not unlike the slaveholders of former years, the liquor 
dealers and liquor leagues have been lengthening the cords 
and strengthening the stakes, to push their hellish system- 
, into all new territory and “ carry their slaves with them!” 
to strengthen and perpetuate the enslavement of the people, 
until, like the former, the business is ripening for destrue- 
tion. And this is the other American twin devil, whose 
burdens are next to be wrenched from the necks of the peo- 
ple, of both the enslaved and the free—the drinkers and the 
abstainers. 

The rebellion strikes a back-handed blow at the pockets 
of the tipplers and spitters, in the shape of revenue taxes on 
the blue ruin and filthy weed, which may deter the new be- 
ginners, they tasting so strong of money. 

Let, then, every true man and woman rally to the rescue, 
in the church and out of it. It is a good time to be a tem- 
perance man; itpays. Let all heads of families consider this 
fact, and act upon it among their children. Keep it before 
the people, that temperance always paid a hundred fold in 
many ways, but pays now better than ever before, when 
whisky is $3 a gallon or twenty cents a drink, and tobacco a 
dollar a pound and rising. 

Keep them rising till none but the stupidest, blindest and 
most inveterate suckers and puffers will touch them. Push 
forward the revolution for a “constitutional amendment” of 
prohibition, as has been already proposed in the Legislature 
of New York, instead of giving license to make drunkards by 
law ! - COR 


LETTER TO HON. HORACE GREELEY. 147 


LETTER TO HON. HORACE GREELEY. 


April 17, 1865. 


Dear Sir: What say you now about leniency to arch 
traitors? Right on the heel of the unheard-of clemency in 
the case of the capture of Lee’s army extended to its chiefs, 
the President and Secretary of State are assassinated! the 
former the best friend the insurgents had. Were these des- 
peradoes, though immediate actors in the bloody drama, the 
instigators of it, the principals init? Who believesit? Or 
rather, who does not believe that they were employed in- 
struments to do the murderous work ; hired assassins set on 
by slaveholding rebels, or their sympathizers, or both, find- 
ing themselves thoroughly whipped in the field, then at- 
tempt to throw the country inte a state of anarchy by strik- 
ing down at once its head, heart and limbs, and to gratify a 
hell-born revenge as well. Who believes that it is but the 
crowning crime of the slaye power in its dying, dissolving 
struggle? No sane man can believe less than this. All 
know, nor can we forget that all the pro-slavery mobs that 
have afflicted the country for these score or two of years, 
the murder of Lovejoy, the war in Kansas, were prosecuted, 
not by slaveholders themselves, but instigated by them and 
the spirit of slavery, and executed by their tools—their in- 
struments. (The beating of Senator Sumner is an excep- 
tion.) So, too, in the great conflict just closing. Hence are 
you not bidding a premium for treason in the interest of 
slavery by proposing indiscriminate immunity to the plot- 
ters of treason ? 

I tell, you the spirit of these vipers is ingrained; un- 
tamed they will sting one to death at every opportunity, 
the more as you let up and give them a chance. ‘There is 
no living in peace and safety in the same country with them. 
Hence a striking example should be made of them, as a warn- 
ing against future attempis at individual or national assassi- 
nations. Individual and national self-preservation demand 
stern dealings with them. Even their word on parole of 
honor is worthless, as abundant experience has hitherto 
taught us. They are full as likely to break faith as to keep 


148 - FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRKAP-BOOK. 


it. You express the belief that the freedmen, even, would 
object to extreme measures against their former oppressors. 
I would like to see an expression on this point from both 
classes of the poor and oppressed under slaveholding sway, 
both black and wite, rather than take your word for granted. 

I think you are on an extreme in proposing to let them — 
all go scot free, as I would be on the other, to propose that 
they should be lawful mark for every one to shoot when- 
ever and wherever met. We want a middle ground of 
action, and I think Gen. B. F. Butler has indicated that 
ground, z. e., have the military leaders, when caught and 
convicted, hung or shot! disfranchise the civilians, and send 
‘the common soldiers home about their business, and have 
them stay there. Yet I would give a large margin for the 
leaders to run away and stay away—hustle out instead of 
hanging. Let them scatter; the more the better for this 
country, at least, if not the world at large; diffusion is the 
less mischievous policy. I don’t know as I would set the 
dogs after them, as they were wont to do in their days of 
power by their victims, not confined to their own bondmen, 
either, but including Union soldiers escaping from starva- 
tion in their prison-hells, though this would seem retributive 
justice—turn around is fair play. 

Time would soon relieve the countries to which they 
might flee, of their presence, by death in one form or an- 
other, and the world cleared of them in the natural order of 
things, would be left for the introduction, in their stead, of a 
better, more peaceable, more industrious in the arts of 
peace, and a less dangerous race of men! CG. Re 


eS 


WHO SHOULD EXERCISE THE RIGHT 
OF SUFFRAGE? 


June 15, 1865. 
[From the State League.] 


Mr. Epiror: This question, perhaps, was never of more 
importance than now, in the history of the American Union, 
especially on account of the sudden and marvelous transi- 


WHO SHOULD EXERCISE THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE? 149 


tion of four million native born people from chattelhood to 
citizens ; and it is aright, if not a duty, for every one 
_ to express an honest opinion on the subject. For this rea- 
son, the undersigned takes the liberty to express a few 
thoughts on it. * 

First of all, then, I would expunge that. odious, because 
invidious word, white, from every Constitution, Statute, and 
Law, in the United States and every State in it, bearing on 
the subject of citizenship and franchise, and thus bring our 
practice a little nearer in conformity with the profession 
that “all men are created equal.” 

This done, I would proceed to discriminate who should 
vote and who should not, making propositions and drawing 
conclusions from statements found in the New York Trid- 
une of June 3, from Neal Dow, on the Maine Law—who 
are its chief violators !—and from the Syracuse Journal, in 
advocacy of negro suffrage, both contained in the League of 
same date, June 3. 

Says the Tribune, in claiming suffrage for the freedmen : 
“We would not concede the right of suffrage to illiterate, 
drunken vagabonds, black or white.” 

In our great haste for ‘“ universal suffrage,”’ we have 
already done that, most eminently, to white folks. We 
have embraced all the world besides the United States, 
good, bad, and indifferent, and how now are we to get out 
of the trap we have set and got caught in ourselves? With 
very little time, expense and trouble, the ignorant, idle, 
drunken vagabonds of all Europe can approach our ballot- 
boxes and vote. This wide extension of suffrage was 
doubtless a great error in our immediate forefathers, who 
made it, and would now acknowledge it, could they speak 
to us on the subject. My own father, at least, who was a 
Jeffersonian Democrat, and quite active in advocacy of 
this extension, said to me, before his death, that it was a 
very grave and dangerous mistake in so wide extension. 
There is no right-minded American now living who does 
not see and deplore it; and if the past is beyond remedy, 
let us be more careful for the future. 

The reader now asks, Who then, sir, in your opinion, 
should vote? I answer: 

First, All native-born citizens arriving at the age of 


150 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


twenty-one years, without distinction of color, race, or sex, 
subject to the following-named restrictions, viz.: In the 
State of New York, where schools are so common and 
cheap, there is no excuse for any adult person not knowing 
how to read and write. So, in this State, that should be a 
law. So, probably, in all the Free States. School advan- 
tages having been so limited in the late Slave States, among 
the masses, white and black, it would alter the question 
there, for the present at least. 

Secondly, No person convicted of any crime whatever 
should vote. 

Thirdly, No habitual drunkard or manufacturer of drunk- 
ards should vote. To this end I would make it a penal 
offense for one to place the cup to his neighbor’s lips to 
make him drunken, since God has pronounced a woe against 
such, instead of now, giving lawful commission (license) to 
do, and incorporate the Maine Law into the Constitution of 
the State, as has been previously proposed by one member 
of the Legislature at least. 

These safeguards respecting the native-born, applied to 
foreigners, would do a good deal toward remedying our past 
mistakes in this direction, for very many of the law viola- 
tors, ignorant, unable to read and write, drunkards and 
drunkard makers, are from that class. Violators of the 
Maine law in that State, the old temperance veteran, Neal 
Dow, writes, “is confined almost entirely to the low Irish.” 

I would further “ balance ” the mischief that is increas- 
ing, growing out of this foreign vote, which is and has 
already been inflicted upon us, both in the cause of freedom 
and temperance, by throwing into the opposite, or native 
scale, a weight I have already incidentally and will again 
name. 

Says the Syracuse Journal, as mentioned above, “ Under 
these circumstances, what is the path to be pursued ? 
Plainly, that which is marked out alike by justice and 
expediency. The votes of those men who are not yet friend- 
ly must be balanced by those who are firmly attached to 
the Union, and who know that the reconstruction of the 
South means the elevation of their race.” 

Just precisely that I would do by the foreign disloyal 
rebel vote just mentioned. I would counteract—* balance ”’ 


WHO SHOULD EXERCISE THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE ? 151. 


it, by admitting native-born women to vote! Exclude. 
foreign-born, of course, the same as we should the men on 
the start, till they had enjoyed a longer pupilage than is. 
now required, in the school of free institutions. This 
would be alike just and expedient. 

But, says one, “tell us plainly, are you in favor of negro 

suffrage?’ Lam. How utterly unjust to still endure this. 
foreign vote, that has been cast dead against the Govern- 
ment all through its recent life and death struggle, besides. 
the voters embarrassing it in all other ways they could,. 
especially the Irish Catholics, and then reject the most. 
unitedly and devotedly loyal of any other class or portion 
of the common people! Never! no, never allow it! 
- The Tribune of June 10, in reply to the charge of 
«‘ Negromania ” made by the Daily News, for its continued 
advocacy of the immediate enfranchisement of the freed- 
men, further says: “ Now, side by ‘side, and intermingled 
with these three million beaten rebels in the South, live 
two million of loyal whites, and three and a half million of 
devotedly loyal blacks. (Not a ‘secesh nigger’ to be 
found.) Now, to enfranchise the southern blacks is to make. 
their several States preponderately loyal. To leave them 
disfranchised is to leave all their political power in the. 
hands of a caste preponderately disloyal. ‘The issue is now 
imminent on one basis or the other; those States must. 
soon be reorganized, and must elect a third of our Congress.. 
In the name of all that is rational, what question could be 
‘opportune,’ if this of negro suffrage is not? And when 
could this be ‘ opportune,’ if not at this moment ?”’ 

The Tribune further urges, in this article, the necessity,. 
in order to save the governments of the rebellious States. 
from falling into the hands of not converted, but only 
whipped rebels, that the blacks shall vote as a balance, with 
much force, as both just and expedient. ‘That is well. In 
another article, repelling further attacks of the Dazly News 
on the Tribune, and contained in the same number, June 
10, the latter turns a short corner—drops the poor negroes, 
most of them, leaving them to the tender mercies of their 
former disloyal oppressors, to bestow the right of suffrage 
upon them at their pleasure. Hear it: “If the Southern, 
States will provide that every black who can read intelli- 





152 -. FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


gently, who owns real estate and has paid a tax, shall be a 
voter, we would gladly accept this as a settlement of a 
vexed question, though it would probably not, for the pres- 
ent, enable one negro in a hundred, perhaps not one in five 
hundred, to vote. 

What does the Trzbune mean? Were these two clash- 
ing sentences penned by the same hand? Where is the 
“‘imminence”’ of the black suffrage if to save the Southern 
States from falling into the hands of the enemies of the 
Union only a fraction, if any of these black citizens, are to 
vote? Away, we say, with all such temporizing, vacillat- 
ing, halting between two opinions, concessions, further at- 
tempts at compromising with ingrained traitors! 

We have fought them and won at untold sacrifice; now 
let us keep an eye straight to the mark, till the work is fin- 
ished—closed up—all old scores paid off. Let the blacks 
vote with the whites, by the same rule, under the same 
qualifications, if it be knowledge, or property, or both, or 
neither. ‘The blacks have helped win victory by constancy, 
valor and bullets. Now let them help in the final settle- 
ment by ballots. 

The invidious distinction between the races, hitherto, has 
cost us this bloody war! Now let us profit by experience, 
remembering that ‘‘ We, the people, ordained this Govern- 
ment, its Constitution, to establish justice,” and in the de- 
parture from this first principle, we are thus severely chast- 
ened. If there is no other constitutional, legal or proper 
method wherein the blacks of the South can enjoy the elec- 
tive franchise equal with the whites, let Congress put its 
foot down immovably, and admit no members from those 
States till this is done, till they each and severally establish 
a Republican form of government not merely in name, but 
in fact, ‘drawing its just powers from consent of the gov- 
erned.” Meantime, let the Northern Copperhead allies and 
sympathizers with the aristocratic rebels of the South, who 
are as badly whipped as they, croak on ! C. R. 


oe pages AP eo a 


NOW’S THE TIME FOR ACTION. 153. 


NOW’S THE TIME FOR ACTION. 


{From the State League.] 


Why not? Rum for a leng time has had full swing in 
that direction. All the old parties are pickled through and 
through with it. ‘The Republican party holds sway over all 
the Union. What is that doing against the rum power ? 
Nothing. It can do nothing. Its elements forbid it. It 
was not organized for that object. It had other work in 
hand. Its mission it has accomplished faithfully and well. 
If there is anything in ‘‘ Reconstruction,” that seems to be- 
long to its work—land reform, the enfranchisement of the 
Southern serfs, etc.,—all may be safely trusted to the hands 
of temperance men. You choose sober men to look after all 
your private affairs,—in the field, in the shop, in the count- 
ing house, in the factory. Are not such as essential in all 
public offices ? Everybody responds, yea ! 

Then organize for the second “ great American conflict.’’ 
Bring out your best, truest, most trusty men in every town, 
city, and county. Put them on the couse and run them. 
And, as is said of Marion of Revolutionary memory, if you 
“ fioht once, get beat, rise and fight again,” and, as did the 
Fathers in their righteous struggle, you will triumph at last. 
Right will come uppermost in the end. 

Establish and sustain, handsomely, too, a thorough-going 
political temperance paper in every county in the State, and 


ultimately in the Union, and more than one if needed. 


Onondaga has already one (the League) of this complexion. 
I repeat, the old jaded parties have already done their 
work ; the sham Democratic utterly failing in its attempt, 
to bolster up, sustain, extend, and perpetuate human bond- 
age, while the Republicans achieved a most signal triumph 
in its arrest and overthrow. Now shove them both from 
the political board to give place to a fresher and more vigor- 
ous organization for the accomplishment of this other great 
national work, that our example be more signally felt all 
through the nations. C. 


154 FATHER ROBINSON’S SCRAP-BOOK. 


THE BALLOT-BOX THE ONLY REMEDY. 


Sept., 1865. 
[From the State League.] 


Mr. Epiror: With my decline of life and health, my 
efforts, hereafter, must necessarily be few, feeble and far be- 
tween in the righteous cause in which you are engaged, 
though my love of temperance is as fresh and ardent as 
ever, and will be enduring to the end. 

My much esteemed friend, G S , has touched all 
the points carefully and well in the Leagwe of September 
8th, which is well indorsed by the Northern Independent. 

There is no longer any profitable occupation for old-time 
temperance societies. It is time and money wasted trying 
to keep them up. So was it with former anti-slavery socie- 
ties. Slavery grew apace, pushing its slimy length along, 
bolder and stronger, notwithstanding all their high talk, and 
vehement resolves placed on paper. Until a party was 
formed expressly to vote against slavery, then, and not till 
then, the war commenced in earnest, and was waged suc- 
cessfully against the gigantic iniquity, until the election of 
a Non-Extension President, and then it was these ballots 
drove the slave power to bullets. Nor, through all the 
bloody conflict from which we have just emerged with slave- . 
ry dead, did the ballot cease to accompany the bullet. The 
re-election of Lincoln was a more staggering blow to rebel- 
lion and slavery, its base, in the South, in the North, all 
over the world, than any single martial victory, however 
e brilliant. 

So with that other curse and scourge of man,—that other 
gigantic incubus, the liquor power, which, worse than slave- 
ry, has not a single redeeming trait to offset against all its 
vast catalogue of hoary crimes, whereas the former had one 
at least, it produced something for the world’s support. So, 
when temperance men go to the polls as did the anti-slave- 
ry men, to vote against slavery and all its allies, outsiders 
and insiders, with a fixed purpose to vote against this liquor 
power till it is voted down and extirpated root and branch ; 








ONLY WAITING. 155 


that will be the beginning of the triumph of the cause you 
and we cherish and advocate, and the beginning of the end 
of the rum power; and until then you will wait, never to 
realize your anxious desire, but witness instead the arch ene- 


my lengthening his coils and strengthening his stakes, without 


let or hindrance, for surer and mightier conquests! 
C. R. 





Pe Oe 


ONLY WAITING. 





[FATHER AND MOTHER ROBINSON'S FAVORITE SONG. ] 





Only waiting till the shadows are a little longer grown ; 

Only waiting till the glimmer of the day’s last beam is flown ; 

Till the night of earth is faded from the heart once full of day ; 

Till the stars of heaven are breaking, through the twilight soft and gray. 


Only waiting till the reapers have the last sheaf gathered home ; 
For the summer-time is faded, and the autumn winds have come. 
Quickly! Reapers, gather quickly the last hours of my heart ; 
For the bloom of life is withered, and I hasten to depart. 


Only waiting till the Angels open wide the mystic gate, 

At whose portals I have lingered, weary, poor, and desolate. 
Even now I hear their footsteps, and their voices far away ; 
If they call me, I am waiting,—only waiting to obey. 


Only waiting till the shadows are a little longer grown ; 

Only waiting till the glimmer of the day’s last beam is flown; 

Then from out the gathering darkness, holy, deathless stars shall rise ; 
By whose light, my soul shall gladly wing its passage to the skies. 


THE END. 














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